Caveat Emptor
by Tierfal
Summary: In which there are shopping trips, sarcasm, backhanded compliments, dark rooms, big guns, bubble baths, trauma of every sort, and detailed fantasies involving cake - lots of those. Let the buyer beware indeed. L/Light.
1. Let the Buyer Beware

_Author's Note: This is the highly-belated other half of RichelleShalark's birthday present, the prompt being "dark."_

_I had the first three lines sitting around forEVER, and then I was behind in NaNo, behind on homework, and generally having a full-out Emo Day, and this incredibly weird premise came into my head, so… it started to happen. Then it starred to limp along pathetically as I got distracted with other things, and now it is finally here. XD_

_Plot is like… I have no effing clue what happened; it ended up being far more complex than I anticipated. XD And the timeline exists, but the calendar doesn't—this is vaguely set just after they've started working with Aiber and Wedy, just before they've called Namikawa and gotten his fine ass on their side._

…_er._

_Basically, wait for it—this fic's true colors don't show until the end of this chapter. Shit goes down. Lots of it._

_I have nothing against thirteen-year-old girls. In fact, I know a few very awesome ones!_

* * *

CAVEAT EMPTOR

_chapter i. let the buyer beware_

Lying in the thickening dark, his hands folded behind his head, Light stared into the oblivion spread before him and wondered which was deeper—the blackness that foiled his eyes, or the one that he feared dwelled, starved and slavering, in the well of his soul.

On the upside, he had a future writing lyrics for death-metal bands.

He made the conscious decision to admire the blackness for what it was—the sheen of sunlit ravens' wings; the bitter taint of tar; the singular shade of L's riotous hair.

And therein lurked the problem, a mugger staking territory in one of the narrow alleys of his mind: L and his goddamn sexy _hair_.

He listened to the quiet breathing that marked the spot where L was curled—so close, but with the chasm of the dark between them. He wrinkled his nose. Angsting about it wasn't going to solve anything. What did he think he was, a thirteen-year-old girl? At this rate, he should start a blog and inundate the internet with poorly-punctuated rants about how his mom wouldn't let him stay out past midnight.

He rolled his eyes, and then he shifted onto his side and closed the eyes in question.

Not that it made a difference, but the gesture was the important part, anyway.

The chain was cold on his bare forearm, but he was tired—tired of the dark, tired of the self-imposed dejection, tired of the world and its ways, tired of himself most of all—and sleep obediently came.

_Good boy,_ he thought hazily as a dream swelled to encompass him. _Have a biscuit._

He'd fix it tomorrow. Tomorrow was another day. _To-morrow, to-morrow, I love ya, tomorrow; you're only… a day a-way…_

Tomorrow, he was going to have that song stuck in his head until he wanted to have a go at his skull with a jackhammer.

—

Sleep obediently came, all right. Now Light couldn't get it to go the hell _away_.

He was rubbing his eyes furiously as L led the way into the central room, where the computers were buzzing quietly in that way that always made Light suspect, albeit extremely irrationally, that they could communicate with one another. He moved over to his favorite monitor and pushed at the mouse, spurring the darkened screen to flicker into life again. Sticky notes dangled from the plastic frame around the screen, addendums and reminders scrawled with various pens that invariably ran out of ink halfway through the message, but even after taking an index of them, he felt like he was forgetting something. Perhaps even something important.

He glanced at L, who was poised to progress into the kitchen. This, Light presumed, was L's way of offering subtle hints about the level of priority one should assign to work and to breakfast.

"Is something important going to happen?" he asked.

L tilted his head to one side. "I believe there is some cheesecake left over from last night," he said.

Light supposed that, in L's perception of things, that _was _pretty damn important.

If there was one thing he'd learned over the last month, it was that arguing with L was like arguing with a particularly attractive—and particularly intractable—brick wall. As much as Light might slam his forehead against the barrier, the mortar was unmoved.

Accordingly, he followed L into the kitchen, where the dumbfounding detective began the familiar task of scouring the refrigerator for desirable items. Success was attained in the form of strawberry-swirled chocolate cheesecake, and then they sat at the table, where L focused exclusively on his newfound prize.

Light set an elbow on the tabletop and a chin on his palm and watched L dig in. The room was silent but for the clink of the fork on the porcelain plate, the whisper of L's pink tongue over the gleaming tines, and the clock on the wall that counted down the seconds towards… what? Untimely death?

Light was hoping it was something rather more pleasant, like, "unexpected awesomeness" or "sudden and inexplicable intellectual nirvana, entailing a startlingly clear understanding of everything that is strange in my intensely bizarre little portion of the world."

L noticed Light's scrutiny and paused, the tines of the fork dimpling his lip. "What is it, Light-kun?" he prompted, tongue reappearing to rescue a smudge of wayward chocolate from where it was stranded at the corner of his mouth.

Counting down towards "backpedaling furiously," then. Better than "untimely death," at least.

"It's very quiet this morning," Light noted. "Shouldn't Mastuda be bursting through the door ready to do our bidding by now?"

L's well-attended lips curled upward at the edges, and he licked another smear of cake from the fork's tines. "I believe," he replied, "that it is Mother's Day."

Light stared at him. Second Sunday of May. Nagging feeling. Inklings of guilt.

"Shit," he said, feelingly, folding his arms on the tabletop. "I haven't talked to my mom in _weeks_."

L tilted his head in that way that should have looked stupid but never did. "Does Light-kun dislike talking to his mother?" he inquired.

Given that this was about as tactful as L ever got, Light figured he should take what he could get.

"It's not really that I don't _like _talking to her," he decided, "so much as…" L sliced another small section from his dwindling wedge of cheesecake and brought it to his mouth. God, that was distracting. "…that I've somehow convinced myself that if I don't talk to her from this world, then she isn't _in _this world."

L blinked a blink that blinked volumes. Then he blinked again, and Light wondered if he should be paying closer attention in case it was Morse code.

With L, you never knew.

"I'm afraid Light-kun has lost me," he announced.

_I hope I don't live to see the day._

"What I mean," Light explained, "is that I know it's completely illogical, but I feel like if I don't contact them, it's like they live in a different universe—a universe that doesn't have Kira. You know? I don't like to think about what it's like for them to live in this world. I don't like to think about them being afraid all the time."

There were lines of chocolate on L's tongue, painted there by the fork again.

"It is unfortunate," he agreed, "that our choices of which universe to inhabit are rather limited."

Light nodded absently and then bit the bullet. "If you're willing," he prompted, "can we stop by my house today? My mom'd probably flip."

"As long as she doesn't have a heart attack," L murmured. He frowned. "Though I don't know that it would be wise to allow myself to be seen by the rest of Light-kun's family."

Light raised his eyebrows, smirking a little despite himself. "Ryuzaki," he said, "my mother is the most harmless person on the face of the planet."

L cocked his head to the side again. "Have you conducted surveys to verify this hypothesis?" he inquired.

Light nodded solemnly.

L sighed, pushing his finger against some escaped cake crumbs, which obligingly stuck to it so that he could convey them to his tongue. "I suppose we can risk it," he conceded.

Light leaned back, folding his arms across his chest, and grinned. "My _sister_, on the other hand…"

Tongue and fingertip still joined, L glanced at him. "Light-kun," he muttered, "has a sadistic sense of humor."

—

Light was feeling wildly optimistic as they sauntered along the sidewalk, garnering almost zero undue attention. He'd managed to convince L to leave the damn chain behind—though it hadn't been easy, of course. Nothing was _easy _with L.

Which he supposed he had to admit was half the fun.

"Can we not take the stupid chain for once?" he'd asked just before L reached the door.

L had paused. "'Stupid'?" he repeated. "Light-kun, it is an important precauti—"

"I'm just going to be _shopping_," Light had countered. "You can follow me around everywhere I go. It'll be exactly the same, except that people won't stare at us and think we're kinky gay lovers."

L had tilted his head, probably wondering if Kira was likely to be homophobic. "I suppose," he had said slowly, "that if Light-kun is willing to give his word…"

"Consider it given," Light had cut in. He thrust his manacled left hand towards his captor. "Now free me from my bonds."

L had fished the key out of a deep pocket and commenced plucking lint off of it, adding under his breath, "Light-kun does not seem to be taking this seriously."

"I," Light had pledged, "have never been more serious in my life."

His beaming grin of sincerity hadn't appeared to cement the point.

Ah, well. You couldn't win them all.

Contentedly, his hands in his pockets, Light peered into display windows and reveled in his liberty. L slouched along behind him, looking slightly paranoid and significantly less than impressed by the shows of enterprising capitalism, until Light finally selected a store that seemed promising.

Strolling down the rows of knickknacks and curios, poking at jewelry boxes, music boxes, and what appeared to be boxes with no particular purpose, Light strove to determine what would suit his mother best. He needed to buy some roses, of course; fortunately all the vendors on the street hadn't lost track of the calendar like he had. But flowers died, and chocolates got eaten (precipitously, if L was around), and he wanted to supplement those kinds of gifts with something permanent. Something lasting.

"Are you going to get anything for your mother, Ryuzaki?" he asked idly.

There was a pause long enough for him to look up and see that L had lifted thumb to lip, uncertainty chasing guardedness across his face.

"I don't have a mother, Light-kun," he said at last.

Oh, boy. That was awkward.

Light ducked his head, examining a glass shelf littered with assorted trinkets more closely. "I'm sorry," he mumbled, kicking himself so hard mentally that it almost actually hurt. "I should've figured, but I didn't realize…"

His fidgeting fingertips lighted on something cold, and he drew from the display a small pink crystal heart.

It was so perfect that he honestly couldn't stop himself from crying, "Aha!"

And not for lack of trying.

Their task completed, they were soon out on the street again, Light with the pink heart tucked into his left breast pocket, the symbolism of which was so glaring that even Matsuda couldn't have missed it. He armed himself with a burgeoning bouquet of roses from one of the eager merchants on the street, and then he and L made their merry way towards the Yagami household.

Light smiled, slightly sadly, as they crossed streets he knew by the sound of his sneakers against the pavement, pattering in the summer with laces trailing, squeaking softly when autumn rains slicked the tarmac until it shone. How long ago had it been that he'd strode these sidewalks, tie at his throat, dressed to the nines, head held high as he marched to class, thinking himself some kind of god among boys? How long had it been since a rather different sort of deity had begun to dictate his life?

It was funny to think that he'd once had no notion of just how small he was. That there had been a time when he hadn't seen the scope of the grand scheme that streamed unconcernedly around him. That he'd had something of an ignorant innocence then, a gleaming bubble holding the rest of the world on the other side.

Well. Things changed.

The fact that his house hadn't, however, was so deeply encouraging that he felt a literal warmth swelling in the center of his chest.

"That's it," he announced, pointing for L's benefit. They were just a crosswalk away.

L paused, an incongruous newcomer superimposed on the familiar landscape. "I don't know if I should go in," he murmured, "but I would also hate to leave Light-kun unattended…"

This again. Light sighed. He felt like a puppy—one that L expected to pee on the rug the second he turned his back.

The urge to whop his captor heartily with the bouquet was a strong one, but Light managed to resist.

"I can refuse to go inside," he offered, "and just stand on the doorstep. You can stay out here and watch to make sure I don't do anything suspicious."

As usual, L deliberately disregarded the thick undertones of sarcasm. "Do you mean that I should loiter out here staring at your house?" he summarized, frowning, a finger rising to his mouth again. "I imagine that would make me look like quite the pervert, Light-kun. How old is your sister?"

Light struggled against the urge to whop himself heartily with the bouquet this time, preferably to the point of blissful unconsciousness.

"Just old enough that you'll definitely have to come inside with me," he replied. "Come on." Without waiting for an answer, he stepped down into the street, glancing both ways. Becoming road-kill was not high on his list of aspirations, and it would have made for a fairly unsatisfying ending to this particular trip.

He was halfway across the street, the median lines stretching beneath his toes, by the time he looked back and confirmed that L was not following.

Hmm…

"There'll probably be cookies," he remarked.

Shaking his head, L shoved his hands in his pockets and stepped delicately down from the sidewalk.

"Why didn't you _say _so?" he asked.

—

"Oh, _Light_!" his mother gasped. "These are _lovely_! Let me put them in water—please, come in, make yourselves at home—"

The platitude was presumably directed at L, but it still ached a little to think that Light had to _make _it his home now—that it wasn't on its own anymore.

He darted into the kitchen after his mother, who had begun the search for an appropriate vase, and L lingered in the living room. Apparently, examining the environment that had nurtured what L believed was a Kira Kid took precedence even over following his suspect.

Light took the big glass vase from his mother's hands and kissed her on the cheek. "Do we have any cake?" he whispered.

Sachiko Yagami considered. "Will pie be all right?" she asked.

"Anything really sugary," he answered, hefting the bouquet and peeling away the tinfoil that encircled the stems. "He says it helps him think."

As his mother was setting the wide dish of pie on the counter, a voice chirped out in the living room.

"Hi! Who are you?"

If Sayu ever did encounter a pedophile skulking on the other side of the street staring at the house, she would probably invite him in for tea.

"My name is Ryuzaki," L murmured uncertainly, sounding as though he was hoping to be rescued. "I work with Light-kun…"

"Cool!" Sayu decided. "Want some Pocky?"

Light relaxed. Sayu befriended everyone on sight, and the sharing of sugar would immediately endear L to her in return. That made things easy.

Sure enough, by the time he and his mother reemerged from the kitchen bearing a plate of pie and a vase of roses, Sayu and L were perched on the couch with the little box between them, a stick of strawberry Pocky protruding from each of their mouths.

Once Light's mother had placed the pie on the coffee table, L unfolded from his usual position on the couch, taking to his feet to shake her hand.

"You look familiar," she decided. "Have we met?"

L considered, removing the Pocky to facilitate speech, and touched the index finger of his released hand to his pursed lips. "I did attend school with Light-kun for a while," he noted.

Sachiko's eyes lit up. "And you were the other honored student on the entrance exam," she recalled. "And I believe you visited Soichiro in the hospital, didn't you? Hideki Ryuga, wasn't it? Like the pop star Sayu likes?"

"_Mom_," Sayu protested from the couch, rolling her eyes emphatically. "Hideki Ryuga was in _months _ago. He's _so_ uncool now."

L blinked. "Yes," was his response to Light's mother's question. "Though I tend to go by Ryuzaki, since the other Mr. Ryuga is so famous."

It was smoothly done, but then, Light had come to expect as much from L—the more innocent he looked, the faster he was calculating.

If he hadn't known better, he might have gotten to thinking that _L_ could be Kira—which, in some ways, would have made terrifyingly perfect sense. What better cover was there than to conduct a fervent investigation of _yourself_? It would be only too easy to lead everyone else in circles, especially for so swift and skillful a liar as "Ryuzaki."

Then again, the idea of a megalomaniac of that caliber being addicted to sugar was a fairly strange one. Would he crown himself the world's ruler upon a throne with toe-rests? _L_ for _Ludicrous_, Light thought.

Besides, if he kept waltzing down that slippery slope, the next thing you knew, he'd be suspecting Matsuda of being a drug lord.

That image was worth a grin.

As was the look on L's face when he found himself forced to choose between French Silk pie and strawberry Pocky.

—

Generally, L's smiles reflected a kind of subdued, slightly sardonic amusement at the ways of their ridiculous world, but as he and Light started back for the headquarters, having finally convinced Sayu and Light's mother to permit them to leave, there was something of a quiet contentment in the expression.

Light liked that. There was a promise in it—or at least a hope.

Sunset reigned, winking in skyscrapers' countless windows, as they made their way along streets warmed by the fading glow. Most of the flower vendors had closed up shop, but a few were still perched on stools in their little stalls, optimistically scanning the road for the frazzled and the forgetful, who would suddenly realize what had been bothering them all day when they saw the "Mother's Day Special!" signs plastered above the last few buckets of roses and carnations. It was quieter now, calmer, and peaceful.

Light smiled, too. This was right. This was how it was supposed to be.

He turned to L just as a lingering ray of sunlight glinted off of the tinted window of an SUV, and he cringed away, momentarily blinded, trying to laugh it off.

He hadn't had time to form the appropriate noise with his throat before the car screeched to a stop at the curb beside them. He squinted, exhaust fumes prickling in his lungs, and then stared stupidly as the door swung open and a pair of thick hands grasped the back of L's shirt and heaved him into the vehicle.

"_Ryuzaki_!" he shouted, at the same moment as L cried, "Light-kun, _run_!"

He should have obeyed.

Instead, he took a step forward.

A single step, as it turned out, was enough to put him in range, at which point a broad-shouldered, bored-looking man in sunglasses reached out, grabbed two fistfuls of his shirtfront, and hauled him into the car.

* * *

_Author's Note: It's not a cliffhanger; it's a narrative hook!_

_…okay, it's a cliffhanger. XD_

_I'll update in two days; please don't track me down and hurt me before then. XD_


	2. The Skeleton Parade

_Author's Note: Eltea is my beta goddess, and I love her to little tiny pieces. x)_

_Is anybody else having the Document Uploader turn everything italic? It__'s REALLY annoying when you have three thousand-odd words to go through re-italicizing. XD  
_

_

* * *

chapter ii. the skeleton parade_

There was a damp, cold, somewhat grimy handkerchief over his nose and mouth, and he thrashed to the best of his meager ability, but before he could complain about unsanitary conditions and general indignity, there was a dizziness, and then there was dark.

—

When Light awoke, it was to an impenetrable, inexplicable blackness.

He blinked in abject horror, three times, four, thinking he was blind.

Then, rolling over on the floor—cold, gritty, altogether unpalatable—he saw a thin line of sunlight searing through a wide crack at the bottom of the wall, a strip of white that set his pulsing head to throbbing with gusto.

Which begged the question—what the hell was this place?

His wrists ached and stung at turns, which the cool steel and faint clink of handcuffs quite succinctly explained.

He'd had just about enough of goddamn _handcuffs _for one lifetime, thanks.

Indistinct voices consulted, and then the unmistakable roar of a nearby engine answered his question: this place was the back of a semi. He could almost make out corrugated steel for walls, but it was hard to tell how much was vision and how much was detailed imagination.

As the engine settled to a low rumble, idling in the… wherever it was, Light heard a quiet groan.

"Ryuzaki?" he prompted tentatively.

"Light-kun," a familiar voice returned, sounding as though its owner was wincing heavily. "May I ask a favor of you?"

It was a strange question for one waking up in the back of an eighteen-wheeler, having been knocked unconscious and dragged to an undisclosed location, presumably about to be dragged to another, more distant one.

Then again, this _was _L.

"Sure," Light permitted over the grinding of tires on pavement as the truck began to move.

"Please pardon my language," L requested.

Light paused.

"What?" he asked.

"_Fuck_," L said, emphatically.

Oh. Well, then.

There was a sigh.

"All right," L decided, sounding steadier. "First of all, are you hurt?"

Light attempted to process the input from his nervous system. "I don't think so," he concluded, "though I do have a _bitch _of a headache."

"I am sorry to hear that," L told him. "Very likely that is a residual result of the anesthetic inhalant. If it doesn't fade with time, please tell me."

Light wasn't sure what L planned to _do _about it, but he doubted that inquiring further would help matters.

He struggled up to a sitting position, trying to wriggle his fingers enough to coax the blood back into them. "So," he said. "Brief me on what exactly just happened here."

L sighed again. "Ah… well—"

"No," Light interjected, musing automatically now as his brain summoned some reserves of wit, "let me think. It's clear that they wanted you, and I was an afterthought. They probably just took me by association, and then because they realized I'd be able to explain what had happened if I got away. But that means that they were looking for you specifically, and had tracked you down. They had to have had a motive, which means they know who you are. But to be able to find you out in the middle of Japan, they must know what you look like, and they must have either been following you for a long time, or have gotten extremely and implausibly lucky." He paused, knitting his fingers together and clenching them behind him, resenting the grit under his hands, which jittered and bounced as the truck shuddered over the road. "Which means… that they must have seen your face, and must either be rogue collaborators—which I find doubtful; that's spy-novel stuff—or people with a reason to want revenge, presumably somebody you'd put away who held a grudge until he got out again."

"Light-kun assumes our captor is male," L remarked idly.

"Purely for the sake of pronoun simplicity," Light replied glibly. "Where was… All right. Let's see. For someone to know your face, he—or _she_—must have encountered you before you were quite so cautious, which would have very likely been necessary when you were just starting out at this whole world's-greatest-detective thing and didn't have any agents on your side, at which point you probably couldn't employ anyone to do your dirty work—ah, _field work_." It was hard to resist the urge to wink, even though it wouldn't have made a difference. "Hmm… how old were you when you started out?"

"When I began officially," L said quietly, "fourteen."

Light hesitated momentarily to consider. "Damn," was the verdict.

"Yes," L agreed, which didn't make a great deal of sense, though Light wasn't in much of a mood to argue. "When we decided upon it, it took Watari and myself two weeks to erase all evidence of my previous existence." Light imagined he blinked placidly. "We had to hack into a great deal of websites and databases; it was quite challenging. And highly illegal."

Light took a few deep breaths. On the bright side, they were alive so far, which was unequivocally good news. "Well?" he prompted. "What comes next?"

"I have hypothetically addressed this contingency on more than one occasion," L answered.

Light paused.

"You've thought about it before?" he paraphrased.

There was a hint of a smile in L's voice. "Yes, Light-kun."

"And?"

Probably a shrug there. "My cellular phone contains an extremely precise tracking device," he explained, "to which only Watari has access. He would have been about to arrive when we left headquarters, and he will indubitably begin attempting to reach me, at which point he will certainly discover that something is amiss."

"Presuming," Light muttered, "that your phone is on."

"Well, the tracker is deliberately designed to function unless the phone is entirely disassem—"

"Presuming," Light cut in, "that they brought it with them."

L was silent a moment to consider. "I should think they would," he responded, "for ransoming purposes. They should realize that the first thing Watari is going to do is to call that phone, which would, from their perspective, be the beginning of negotiations."

Light drew his knees up to his chest, feeling distantly L-ish, and rested his head on them. "If they know you're L," he noted, "they might expect you to try a trick like that."

He didn't mention the possibility that ransom wasn't on their captors' minds.

"I have other precautions in place as well," L murmured. It sounded a little hollow.

It sounded like a lie.

"Happy Mother's Day, mom," Light mumbled into his knee. "Your son got himself kidnapped and took Ryuzaki with him."

"It's hardly your fault, Light-kun," L reassured him quietly.

"Would you have been traipsing around Tokyo today if it hadn't been for me?" he countered.

L shifted. "Please try to stay optimistic, Light-kun," he said softly. "That's just about all we have left at this juncture."

"Real encouraging," Light muttered.

L sighed. "Are you even listening, Light-kun?"

—

Light dozed against his knees—the position was surprisingly sustainable and not too uncomfortable; L was really onto something—and slipped into a dream where the rumbling belonged to the earth-movers of a construction site. He was frowning about it, because it was very distracting; and he was cold, because he didn't have anything more than his underwear on; and his shoulders ached, and his wrists stung, because he was handcuffed to the bed-frame. He was just starting to wonder why in the blazing hell he'd be cuffed to the headboard, feeling the muscles between his shoulder-blades start to cramp in protest, when he heard L calling gently, "Light-kun, Light-kun," which seemed to be his way of apologizing for the fact that he couldn't find a fork for the cake that was sitting on the nightstand. There was a whole pile of cake, a mountain of cake, an _Everest _of cake balanced on the bedside table, cake that came in a variety of different colors, and it was all capped with bright strawberries like a bunch of pudgy flags. That was a lot of cake, and Light would hate to see it wasted, so he tried to wait patiently while L rattled through the silverware drawer, trying to find a fork—he could've sworn they had at least one…

A flashlight streamed into his eyes, rousing sharp, instinctive tears, and he winced and ducked away, still wreathed in the last shreds of the dream, still taunted by the deep, gentle contentment that had flown beneath the minor irritations plaguing his fantasy.

"Fucking…" he muttered under his breath, and his voice cracked.

The flashlight-wielding fiend snickered a little, grabbed his arm, and yanked him down from the truck bed. Blindly he stumbled, Picasso patches of white still blaring on the backs of his eyelids, uncaring hands steadying him as his numb feet and his overbearing pride rebelled in inconvenient unison. Somehow, he was manhandled out of the truck and onto the pavement, where he fought for his balance and fortunately won. Squinting, he made out an L-looking object beside him, its wild hair silhouetted by the harsh eyes of the fluorescent lamps looming over what appeared to be an empty lot.

"Just stay calm, Light-kun," he recommended.

"Easy for you to say," Light shot back, slightly startled by the snide tone to his own voice. "You don't _have_ feelings."

He shouldn't have said it. He never should have said anything like that. Not to L. Not to the only friend who had ever felt like one.

L looked at him for a long moment, though his eyes were visible only as a faint gleam in the dark.

"I will do my best to talk us out of this situation," he said quietly at last. "I hope that you will trust me."

Of course he did. Of course he trusted…

It was the dream. It was waking up from it. It was blinking his way awake to the unnerving epiphany that his subconscious mind had jammed the two of them into a dingy apartment by a construction site, cake overflowing from the nightstand and crumbling messily to the floor, him tied to the fucking _bedpost_, asking quite politely to be compromised, and he'd been _happy_ about it.

If that wasn't enough to justify snapping at L, he didn't know what was.

…God, he hoped it was enough.

Somebody prodded his lower back with an unsympathetic hand, and he moved obediently forward, trying to resist the urge to watch L for any sign he could extrapolate.

They were shepherded into an unrepentantly industrial building, a warehouse wonderland of steel and cement, bars on the windows and sawdust on the floors. This, like the layer of grime on the floor of the truck bed, offended Light's deepest-held sanitary sentiments. He suspected a conspiracy.

Ill-lit hallways spread out in the glare of the flashlights' beams, shades of gray hemming them blandly in on every side. Light's eyes were mutinously objecting to the abuse, and, weak and bleary from the insubstantial nap, pins and needles stabbing in his mistreated hands, he had little consolation to offer them.

The yellow-white probes outlined a padlocked steel door no different from any of the others, and one of the bulky dark shapes moved forward to undo the lock. The door swung open, hinges piping up with an ear-splitting squeal, and broad hands planted themselves on Light's back and shoved.

Barely balanced to begin with, he supposed it wasn't much of a surprise that he tumbled to the floor, scraping his chin, his head smacking against the impassive cement hard enough to rouse his headache from the gentle muttering to which it had subsided to a full-fledged roar.

Rolling over onto his back only to grit his teeth at the pressure on his hapless hands, Light tasted blood in his mouth and decided, once and for all, that today was not a good day.

And it got a whole lot worse when they took L away with them.

He'd been counting on having his longtime companion with him here as well. He'd been banking on L's low voice and imperturbable calm, on the unwavering gaze, on the wry amusement even in the direst straits. He'd been literally linked to the man for so long that he'd come to rely on L's _presence_.

He didn't like being alone.

Cold everywhere except where more blood drizzled halfheartedly from the raw place on his jaw, he curled up on his side, trying to ignore the numbness building in his arm and the throbbing taking up residence in his shoulder. He didn't have the heart for pain, or the patience. He was alone, and they'd probably tossed L's cell phone into the first Dumpster they could find.

—

His limbs were leaden when he awoke, with blurred and grainy eyes, to the mournful wail of hinges and the cadence of a calm, disinterested voice that spoke in English.

He rolled partway over, clenching his jaw against the flaring anger of his agonized muscles, and squinted up into the face of the newcomer, whose words he could narrowly puzzle out through the triple impediments of the haze of sleep, the limits of his English vocabulary, and the impassive figure's unfurling drawl.

"Then his father will be among the first to hear the news," the man remarked. Flashlights' pale eyes darted wildly as their owners moved, and Light glimpsed a face—a thin face, a gaunt face, a face with cheekbones like snow-capped ridges and eyes like sunken coals primed for consumption by the ambient ash. The body matched, skinny, but not like L's—L was slender, and this man was sticklike. Sharp and narrow, like an insect. A scarecrow with glowing eyes.

He must have imagined it. His mind was playing tricks, conniving with the flashlights' fakery.

"We can make the call now," someone volunteered, another face flickering into and out of being, a real one, a human one this time.

"No," the creature demurred idly. Glints in the depths of the black sockets met Light's questioning eyes. Either they assumed he couldn't piece together a bit of English, or they didn't care. "Give them a little time to miss him first. What's the phrase? You don't know what you have until you've let it go?"

The face fragmented into a smile.

"A charming adage." He paused, and then, in accented Japanese, finished, "Good evening, Light. Please make yourself at home."

The hinges howled, and the door shut.

Light looked at the black expanses of the ceiling, at the black expanses of the wall, at the black expanses of this world. It was a nightmare. It was in his mind. He'd wake up in a warm apartment, the air thick with the smell of newly-made baked goods salvaged from the womb of the oven, and he'd drowse lazily on the bed that filled the space, because they didn't have room for a couch and didn't care, and L's hair would whisper against his neck as its owner licked the last smudges of frosting from his fingertips, and he'd set his head on Light's shoulder, and they'd sleep…

—

It was the sound of the door opening that roused him again, and he lifted a skull still shrouded in wispy dreams.

Somebody really needed to do something about those hinges.

A slight form received a firm push and crumpled not far away, distinctly silhouetted against the dim silver light from the hall. The wedge of illumination in question was reduced to a sliver as the door began to shut, and then it was gone.

"L?" he whispered into the dark. One syllable and his throat felt raw. He would have sold his soul for a glass of water.

"Yes, Light-kun," L's disembodied voice confirmed from the immensity of the blackness about them. The voice in question was lower even than usual—raspier, but gentler than he'd ever heard it. "Are you hurt?"

"No," Light decided, his arms and fingers tingling vindictively as if to betray him. "Are you?"

There was a terrible pause.

"Nothing that won't heal, Light-kun," L told him softly.

Light closed his eyes, but there wasn't any relief in it, because it made no difference. "What did they do to you?" he demanded. "Who are these people?"

It did not escape his notice that L only answered the second question.

"His name is Thomas Wergild," he explained, familiar cotton rustling as he moved. "And I put him in prison for a very long time, though it appears he's bribed his way out or managed it with 'good behavior.' In any case, he sold drugs to half of greater Los Angeles and a staggering portion of South America. The game, as it were, that we played set a world record for the amount of money at stake in a single case."

Light smiled automatically. "That's my Ryuzaki."

Jesus, he _was_ tired. Why had he said that? Too much trauma. He needed to touch base and screw his head back on; the circuit wasn't closed, and the light-bulb wasn't working.

Appropriately enough.

He detected a faint smile in L's voice as the beleaguered detective replied.

"I was sixteen," he noted, "and remarkably naïve. I let him learn to recognize me, quite like you said. I had hoped it wouldn't come back and cause me to regret it, but my choices were rather more limited then. I was sloppier—I had to testify at his trial, and we destroyed all indications of my person, but he had ample time to become acquainted with my appearance."

Light gathered his strength and maneuvered into a sitting position, ignoring the angry sewing kit of nerve signals that recommenced its assault on his helpless limbs. The joints in his knees creaked unhappily as he folded his legs up against his chest and laid his head on them.

"So," he said. "What now?"

It was like last time. It was like the dim cell in the heart of the complex, like the hopeless captivity he'd known before, like the bars in front of him and the wall behind, his hands bound, his head thick, fevered thoughts coagulating as he started staring contests with the cold eye of the camera, knowing he couldn't win. That he could never win.

L shifted. "Now," he replied mildly, "we wait."

"What for?" Light prompted wearily.

"I don't know," L admitted. "We'll find out. There's a possibility of rescue, as we established earlier, but I'd estimate the chances of that proceeding as intended to be around twenty percent."

One in five, then.

Somehow, that wasn't very reassuring.

Especially since this hadn't already happened four times with no results.

"You're supposed to know everything," Light heard himself mumble nonsensically. Or perhaps it was meant to be funny. Why couldn't he shut himself up? "You're L."

"No one knows everything," L responded, a touch of dark amusement to the statement. "Certainly not me." He drew in a deep breath. "We'll be all right, Light-kun."

"Is that a promise?" Light inquired.

"I try not to make promises," L explained, "for fear of inadvertently breaking them. Consider it… a hope."

"God," Light managed weakly.

"He may yet be on our side," L noted.

_Not if he's in my head,_ Light thought morosely. _Not if he knows what kind of madness is keeping me sane._


	3. Human Contact

_chapter iii. human contact_

They'd been sitting in silence for a long time.

Light was losing it. He didn't know exactly how "it" was quantified, but "it" was going, and fast. In this impenetrable, unbreakable, speechless, sightless _pit_, he was losing "it" at the speed of Light. He couldn't tell what part of the day it was; he couldn't differentiate walls or the door or even _himself_; he couldn't see L sitting two feet away—or three, or five, or eight-fucking-teen for all he knew. There was no concept of space, no tracking of time, no reassurance of his existence at all, but for the grating of his breath in his dry mouth. He strained to hear the soft answering sigh of L's, struggling not to panic when long moments passed in which he couldn't make it out. The dark pressed against his wide-open eyes and wriggled wormlike in through his ears.

It was eating his brain.

_Guh_.

It was like before. It was like before, except that this time, he was stranded in an uncaring oblivion, and no one would be watching intently on the monitor in case he passed out from lack of food, lack of sleep, lack of human contact…

He was of the belief that human contact was a necessity. Not all humans. Just… some of them. There were people he couldn't live without.

He wasn't sure how he'd done it before, but he didn't think he could do it again. Not now that he knew the difference.

He cleared his throat, and it sounded like a thunderstorm.

"Did you really think," he managed, "all that time, that I was Kira?"

"Light-kun uses the past tense," L observed quietly.

_Please._

"You can't honestly—"

"Light," L interrupted, gently but unrepentantly, "listen to me. The judgment is not personal. It is not about you. It is not a reflection of how I feel about you. It is about the case, for which reason I am doing my very best to separate myself from that case. Differentiating myself as a human being from the work that I do isn't something that's easy for me, but I am trying very hard to ensure that Light Yagami as a suspect and Light Yagami as a person exist in two distinguishable parts of my life."

He could understand that. Of course he could understand that. L probably dealt with people this way all the time. It was probably the only reason he was still alive.

For the moment, anyway.

"What about me reeks of mass-murdering psychopath?" he muttered. "I could get a new cologne."

L laughed softly. "No," he responded, "Light-kun smells like he ought to smell. It isn't that so much as…"

He trailed off, and the silence stifled them again.

"What?" Light prompted.

"It is my conclusion," L mused, "that Kira believes that what he does is right. I think he does see himself as the world's savior, and misguided as he may be, he has the power to enforce his will. Given what he has done with that power and what he appears to intend to do… that requires a certain type of person."

Light closed his eyes. Dark. What a surprise.

"And you think I'm that type of person," he finished.

There was a pause.

"Not as such," L replied, inexplicably. "It is more that… you are righteous. You are naïve. You believe in things like justice, and you see the world in black and white."

_All black, at the moment._

"Thank you or something," Light muttered, wishing, wildly and fervently, that he could run a hand through his hair. He wanted a damn shower. He wanted five damn showers in a row, though he wasn't entirely sure how he intended to determine where one ended and the next began.

"It is a good thing," L responded softly, "to have faith. And what is likely the most backhanded compliment thus far… to be frank, Light-kun, you're the only person I've ever encountered who I believe is intelligent enough to have executed—even to have _imagined_—a plot of this caliber. There are not many people like you—like us—in the world, Light-kun. Many high-class criminals are intelligent, but they are not _brilliant_. Kira is, and you are." He breathed. "I know that isn't proof. I know that's barely a correlation, and no court would take commonality as evidence. But you have the potential, Light-kun. Almost all of the variables are in place. That's what frightens me. And that's why I can't let it go."

"I haven't done anything," Light insisted, gritting his teeth. "I don't _know_ anything. You've been here. You've seen. Isn't that enough, L? Aren't your own damn eyes evidence enough?"

"It's got to be you," L murmured. "It must be."

"_Why_? There are other geniuses, L. Other people with all the _variables_. There's _you_."

The handcuff chain jingled quietly, and he gathered that L was shaking his head, more to himself than anything else.

"It must be you," L told the dark, "or I have nothing."

"If it's me," Light returned wearily, "then I do."

"Light-kun—"

"Think about it, L. All that I've put into this—all the time, all the effort, all the energy. All the people I would have had to lie to, all the trust I would have had to betray. That's all I've got—the reassurance that those things belong to me. Being Kira would devalue every one of them. Destroy it all." He drew in a deep breath, held it, and released it. "I know it would make sense, and I understand what you're saying, but… I'm not, L. I know it's hard to trust that, trust _me_, but there's nothing else I can give you. The truth is all I have."

There was a long silence, and then L spoke quietly.

"Do you think they're watching us, Light-kun?"

"What do you mean?" he asked. "Infrared camera?"

"Something to that effect, yes."

"I imagine they would," he decided, "for safety purposes. But what difference does it make?"

"None." The links of the handcuff chain trilled again, and then bare feet patted over the cement as their owner crossed the floor. L sat down—close by, terribly close by somewhere behind him, and then even closer as he slid towards Light until their spines touched. He took Light's sore, chafed hands in his and held them. His palms were smooth, and his fingers were warm. "No difference at all."

—

L's thumb was sliding gently back and forth along his index finger. It was lulling. It was solace.

"Have they fed you, Light-kun?" he asked.

"No," Light murmured, shaking himself awake. Something struck him. "You must be starving…" To be deprived of sustenance this long had to be an indescribable blow to a perpetual snacker like L.

Not to mention the unprecedented dip in his blood sugar; good God.

"I'll survive," L decided mildly. "How is your headache?"

Light had been focusing almost exclusively on the warm, soft pressure of L's hands around his. He attended the nerve inputs from his skull.

"Worse," he related.

Feathery hair brushed the back of his neck as L nodded, and goosebumps rippled down his arms. Unthinkingly he clasped L's hands a little tighter.

"The dehydration could do that on its own," L informed him, "so we can't really be sure whether or not there are any lingering effects from the anesthetic."

"Uh-huh," Light mumbled. _Cake. Cake and strawberries, flavor exploding on his tongue; sweet, cool juice running down his dry throat, slicking its sore walls; L's thin fingers brushing a lock of hair behind his ear… Is that enough, Light-kun? We have a great deal if you'd like more. We have all the cake you could ever want, all the cake _I_ could ever want, and all the time in the world…_

"Are hallucinations normal?" he heard himself asking indistinctly.

"Hallucinations, Light-kun?" He wasn't sure whether the note in L's voice was puzzlement or concern.

"More like… daydreams…"

L's fingertips grazed his palm. "What of?"

Oh. He should quit now, while he was, if not ahead, at least not totally fucked.

"…stuff…"

L was smiling faintly now; he could detect it—ha…—in his colleague's voice. "The particular character of 'stuff' involved makes quite a difference, Light-kun."

Light shifted. "It's usually… cake."

There was a pause.

"I don't think you need to worry too much, Light-kun," L told him. "I daydream about cake with some consistency."

_I like my cake with a good consistency, too._

He wanted to slap himself, but even without the handcuffs, he never would have dared to take his hands away from L's. He had no guarantee he'd be allowed to put them there again.

"Well," he said, "I… don't, usually. Y'know."

"I would imagine not," L replied, sounding vaguely amused. "Do these daydreams include anything else?"

Light took a deep breath. He knew how persistent L could be. L must have already known, or he wouldn't be asking. He was _L_, for Christ's sake.

"You," he answered quietly. "You're in them."

_You, me, cake, handcuffs. Sounds like a party. See you at seven? (Or will we need more time?)_

L hesitated—for a split-second, but he did—before returning to the task of stroking the backs of Light's hands.

"That makes sense," was his verdict. "You have likely come to associate cake with me, and with good reason."

Yeah. That was it. That was it, and all there was to it.

This was a dead-end street, and he'd better brake and turn around before he spun out of control, smashed through a fence, and ended up in someone's swimming pool.

That happened sometimes.

"Yeah," Light improvised feebly. "I'm sure that's all. It makes sense."

L squeezed his hands gently. "We're going to get through this, Light-kun," he promised. "One way or another, between the two of us." The two of them. The pair of them. Together. United. Understood. "Believe that, and believe in it. I lie when it suits me, Light-kun, but I'm not lying now."

"I know," Light told him. "I can hear that you believe it, too." He smiled thinly, his cracked lips mustering a meek, stinging protest. "Though the optimism seems a little uncharacteristic."

He heard an answering smile in L's voice, dryer even than his own. "We must have something," L noted.

Light held tighter. "We've got hope, then," he said. "Hope, and each other."

—

Unsurprisingly, both of his bulwarks failed.

They came for L again not long later. The hinges shrieked, and the faint gray light was blinding where it streamed from the hall. L clutched Light's hands briefly closer, then released them and stood with the usual strange, half-bent dignity. Through the dappled veil of black and white spots shifting before his beleaguered eyes, Light saw just how pale, gaunt, and tired L looked despite his indomitable will.

Well, there went the hope.

Whichever indifferent lackey it was grabbed L's shoulder and jerked him across the threshold; it was blatantly a matter of intimidation for its own sake. He pitched something at Light—somehow he ducked it, and it rolled across the floor a ways. The door slammed shut again, the hinges howled again, and Light, in kind, once more sighed feelingly and let his shoulders slump.

He sat still for a few long minutes—or perhaps a single long moment, or perhaps a relatively brief eternity—before noticing just how tingly his hands were, and how idle his mind.

Neither would do for the great and gifted Light Yagami, of course.

With three deep breaths to fortify him, Light set about the task of threading himself through his own linked arms to move the handcuffs around to the front.

Judging by the general silence of things for the past however-long-it-had-been, he doubted that anyone was watching or would care—and why should they? What difference did it make if he could finally scratch his nose? He was still alone with his thoughts in a pitch-black room, the door was still locked, and all his prospects still looked distinctly shitty.

Business as usual.

The cuffs bit into his wrists as he struggled to slide them under himself, and he kicked off his shoes to lose a fraction more bulk, wondering why he hadn't thought to do it earlier. His endlessly-chafed wrists were chafing again, with renewed vigor and considerable gusto; blood began to trickle almost lackadaisically along the lines of his palms, running down his fingers, and droplets quivered, suspended, at the tips. He focused on the warmth instead of the needles of pain, a tremor of shredding guilt rippling through his stomach at the thought of what L might be enduring as he sat here, curled, straining, and bitching about it like a spoiled socialite.

Gritting his teeth and clenching his fists, he fed his legs through the awkward ring made by his trembling forearms and drew the cuffs up and past his knees, and then he had… succeeded.

He would have liked a bit of fanfare to accompany his vaguely-contortionist triumph, but no such luck.

Tentatively he probed at the worst of the scrapes before remembering where his fingertips had been—that was, here with the rest of him—and revising his decision to deliver bacteria directly into his own bloodstream.

Cringing inwardly even now, he wiped his hands on his pants and waited uncertainly, the emptiness pressing, his hoarse breathing a roar in his ears, for the bleeding to stop. He supposed that if it didn't, his best recourse would be to go to the door and make noise until someone came to help.

If he could find the door.

If his voice worked.

If anyone was _there_.

Deep breaths. Oxygen to the brain. The walls were not closing in. They would bring L back soon, like they had done last time. It would be okay. L had said so. He believed it, and L was always right. Hope, and each other.

He found the item the guard had thrown, which turned out to be a plastic bottle of water. Prying the cap off, sniffing, and testing it with the tip of his tongue, he found nothing amiss, and he was so damn thirsty that he almost wouldn't have cared anyway. It wasn't like poison would do all that much more damage than the dehydration.

When he'd emptied half the bottle one slow, savoring sip at a time, he set it carefully aside to save the rest for L and sat again to wait.

Cautiously, when the twinges in his chafed wrists had faded to a dull, consistent throbbing, he lay properly on the floor for the first time, folding an arm to pillow his head and settling gratefully. It was strangely, almost eerily easy to sleep here, or at least to drift and doze until it was impossible to discern sleeping from waking. Maybe it was the indistinguishable, fragmented mess of time, or maybe it was simply the purity of the dark.

This was all very tiring.

—

The door opened. Light raised his heavy head, thinking he should hide the new position of the handcuffs, but there wasn't time, and the door slammed peremptorily shut as soon as L had been shoved through it anyway. Bare feet pattered, stumbling, and a fresh cadence of shallow breathing joined Light's.

"Are you all right?" he asked, sitting up and peering uselessly into the field of oblivion before him.

"Yes, Light-kun," L answered—belied by his voice, faint and inches short of breaking. "Are you?"

"I'm fine," Light assured him, getting unsteadily to his feet to step cautiously towards the sound. "Where are you?"

"Here, Light-kun," came the reply, and he moved to the voice, arms outstretched, until his hands found the warmth of L's shoulder, the cotton of the familiar plain shirt soft where his fingertips brushed along a seam. Unthinkingly, he latched on with his left hand, feeling for L's face with his right, wanting, somehow, to confirm…

A wet warmth now, a trickle under his thumb, thick, slick, and feebly dripping. No, no, _no_—

"You're bleeding," he concluded, hearing his voice shake. "What did they _do_ to you?"

"I'm tired, Light-kun," L murmured. "Please let me sit down."

"Well—sure, of course, here—there's a little water—"

Gently he guided the spindly figure to the floor, holding L's arm to bear as much of the man's insubstantial weight as he could manage. L made a weak noise that combined the worst parts of a sigh and a groan. Light winced, fumbled the bottle into the thin, thin hands, and repeated, more softly than before, "What did they do, L?"

"It's merely intimidation, Light-kun," L answered quietly, handcuff chain jingling meekly as he shifted to raise the bottle to his lips. L's lips. Not the time to think about L's lips, L's lips and water, L's lips and cake… "And of course the pettiest sort of revenge; the further a man falls, the uglier his dreams of retribution."

"What do they want from you?" Light asked, running a hand—well, both his hands, since they were linked—down L's arm, a gesture he hoped was equally encouraging for its object.

"They want to know," L explained quietly, "how much of my money and our money Watari would be willing to shell out to recover me—to recover us, though odds are they'll approach the Japanese police separately on your behalf."

Light frowned, struggling to resist the urge to take L's hand in both of his and refuse to let it go. "But… Watari would just pay them the stupid money and be done with it, wouldn't he?"

"That," L noted, "or he is already on his way, which would explain why they're still telling me that I must convince him—they can't reach him. Whatever the case, it would be a tremendous waste of money that could go towards much more important projects."

There was a pause.

"You're letting them beat you," Light summarized flatly, "to save a couple bucks."

"A couple million," L sighed.

"As if money means _anything_ to you."

"…there is also the principle of the thi—"

"_L_!"

Chain links clinked again as L raised both hands to rub his face. "Light-kun," he whispered, "what would you have me do?"

Light hesitated for a long moment, and then, cautiously, carefully, giving the other man ample time to revolt and recoil, he crawled around to sit behind L and drew the narrow torso gently down, settling the riotous head in his lap, where he could bury both hands in L's hair and slide his fingers slowly through the tangles of feathery strands. L's hair was impossibly soft, soft like a kitten's fur, matted in places with blood and heaven knew what else, smooth and violently angled, but incredibly clean given the various horrors to which its owner had been subjected.

Light expected L to protest, or to pull free, or at least to tense up, unnerved by the contact and the proximity, but… he didn't. Instead, he settled on Light's crossed ankles, nestling closer, and released his next breath as a warm, soft, contented sigh.

"That's nice, Light-kun," he whispered. "Thank you."

It was because L couldn't look at him. It was because anything that happened in the midst of nothingness was perfectly deniable. It was because they were alone, and even the one and only L needed a little human contact sometimes.

Light touched a delicate finger to a meticulously even crescent-shaped laceration on L's cheek. "So he thinks that the more he abuses you," he surmised slowly, "the more money Watari will be willing to offer for your return. Your 'safe' return. The more you'll ask Watari to offer, it sounds like."

"Precisely right," L remarked, a note of approval in amongst the resignation.

"But—he wouldn't kill you," Light sputtered. "I mean—would he?"

He heard a smile in L's soft voice.

"Have you ever been in love, Light-kun?"

It was a complete non sequitur, but all Light could think was that L didn't say _fallen_. He said _been_.

"I—" All the grit and dust of a thousand Saharas had conspired and coalesced to block his throat. "—don't—know…"

It couldn't mean what it ought to. What it had to. What he wanted it to mean.

He scrabbled after thoughts like dandelion seeds on the breeze, but they were gone. His head rang hollow.

"It was very stupid, really," L remarked. "The moment that I realized."

He was having trouble breathing. The world was moving too fast; somebody needed to tell whoever was running this show to slow it the hell down, because he was going to fall off and hurt himself.

"Do you remember," L asked, "when you asked me if I wanted the strawberry on your slice of cake?"

If he'd had a brain, he might have tried to rack it for the sliver of information, but his skull ached with its own emptiness, and there was nothing decipherable written on its walls.

"No," he said, feeling the blood throb in his fingertips where they rested against L's skin.

"Well," L replied, smiling faintly again by the sound of things, "you did."

His mind was an Arctic wasteland, everything swathed and silenced by a blinding white that burned in contrast with the dark that hemmed him here.

"And—you—realized…?"

"No," was the correction, still smiling. "I realized when I said, 'I'd rather you have it,' and discovered that I meant it."

Fucking strawberries. Fucking _strawberries_ had no right to change everything when the status quo was so, so wonderfully secure. Light understood how to operate in a world where L was distant, aloof, untouchable, and unmoved—when he was a god-angel hovering just beyond the limits of accessibility, when he was more than human, when his preternatural reasoning and his ethereal form together proved that he existed in a separate sphere entirely. But this—confessions, admissions, what might have been truths—this wasn't L. This couldn't be L. This couldn't be L, because it wasn't safe to love him if there was a chance in heaven-hell that he loved back.

Light held his double-knotted tongue and petted L's hair with shaking hands. There was blood on them, not just his blood, but L's too. L wasn't supposed to bleed. If he could bleed, he could break, and if L broke, the world did.

L lay still for a long moment before clearing his throat. "I believe this is the part," he noted, "where you inform me first that I am a stalker and second that you are into women."

"You're not," he retorted immediately, because defending L and disagreeing with him were both reflexive and frequently contradictory. "And—and I'm not. I mean—I'm not into women, but not really men either. It's not about a gender; it's about… people. Specific people." He swallowed and closed his eyes, to an identical darkness that at least was self-imposed. "You."

L breathed, and Light stroked his bangs back from his forehead.

"I'm not easy to get along with, Light-kun."

"I've noticed."

"The fact that you persist so far makes me optimistic."

"You're worth it."

"My modi operandi are… abnormal…"

"You also have a propensity for getting in way over your head."

"Yes."

Light traced a heretofore-mythical eyebrow. "Yes," he said.

L was silent for a moment. "If you're willing to try," he decided, "then I will do everything I can."

"If we survive this part," Light replied.

"Light-kun's sanguine outlook is positively inspiring."

"You're a sarcastic bitch."

"And a kettle of a rich ebony, Light-kun."

Light smiled, leaned down, and kissed his forehead. "And that," he said.


	4. Dry

_Author's Note: This site has of late been very finicky indeed.  
_

_

* * *

chapter iv. dry_

Light traced the curve of L's ear, following it down his neck as far as he dared.

"You really think this will work?" he asked, unsure what kind of answer he was looking for. Why was he promoting doubt at a time like this? Why give voice to the misty tendrils of anxiety that curled their damp fingers around his heart?

The last thing he wanted to do was to encourage abnormal internal weather patterns. Honestly.

"You think we'll be able to act like this with the lights on and people around? It'll be different when we can see to look each other in the face."

There was a wry smile in L's voice again.

"I presume," he remarked, "that Light-kun has noticed that his face is a very pleasant one to look at."

Light laughed without much enthusiasm. "I think the novelty will wear off."

"Initially, I thought the same thing," L replied. "Unfortunately, justice is never truly blind; it would make my job significantly easier if the platitude were true, but…" He paused, musing. "It was interesting, however, that there was a marked moment… it was smooth charm before—faultless, sometimes almost brazen—and something else afterward. Something more deferent. And perhaps it was mostly wishful thinking on my part, or that storybook persistence of the heart in flouting the better judgment, but I thought that… perhaps… for me… there was something else as well—something more than respect." A brittle smile, by the sound of it. "Icing on the cake, so to speak. And at that point, I made the mistake of daring to hope."

Light combed L's bangs off of the smooth forehead, drawing deep breaths, trying to hold onto his own head before it became a balloon and floated off into one of the corners he presumed this oblivion possessed.

"I'm not as subtle as I think I am," he managed.

"I have a gift for overzealous analysis," L responded. He sighed softly. "I… Light-kun, you're so _young_."

"I'm eighteen," Light countered. "That's legal in every country in the world. And I think it's fair to say even then that I'm not exactly an average eighteen-year-old."

"The thought had crossed my mind."

Light rolled his eyes, pretending not to grin. "Again with the sarcasm."

"Some people would call that 'witty repartee,' Light-kun," L pointed out.

"I call it 'you being a smartass,'" Light retorted.

"An equally valid assessment," L decided.

"You're not scared, then?" Light inquired into another pause. "Of what people will think?"

"I have never much concerned myself with what people think," L answered calmly—which was something that was true of L, and that Light could understand but not internalize. He thrived on performance—on perception, and on presentation. To simply _not care_…

Perhaps L heard it in the silence, for he added: "I worry only that Amane-san will eviscerate me before I have the chance to explain myself."

Light tried to stop his fingers from trembling noticeably where they flitted against L's skin. It seemed to be hopeless.

"And you're not worried I'll turn out to be Kira after all?" he asked.

L breathed three times before he spoke.

"I will always fear that contingency," he admitted softly. "But at this juncture, it seems that the risk is justified by the reward."

Light smiled tentatively. "I'm worth more than winning? Is that what you're saying?"

L took another deep breath, fortifying a stronghold Light had never imagined could need the reassurance. The handcuff chain clinked as he raised his hands to take both of Light's, disentangling them from his hair and drawing them lower, holding them to his chest with a warmth breeding whispers of urgency.

"Yes," he murmured. "I told you it was stupid."

Light slid his fingers carefully free, delved a hand into his shirt pocket, and pressed the glass heart he'd bought, a thousand years ago in another world, into L's empty palm.

"No," he said. "It's not."

—

The door opened, hinges plaintive, and anemic light slithered over the pair of them. Light winced away, trying to see through the spots before his eyes, hands clenching tighter around L's as if he could prevent anything with goodwill alone.

_Not again. Not again. Not now._

By the time he'd blinked his vision clear, four men were standing around them in a loose circle, doing their best to look menacing.

They were largely succeeding.

The new light illuminated the unnatural, unnerving pallor of L's white face, the thick smear of coppery red trailing from the cut on his cheek, the violet bruises with their undertones of a sick brown—he looked like hell.

_Hell, L, fell, don't tell._

Reluctantly, with the humorless ex-second-cousin of a rueful smile, L gathered himself and his dignity and rose to his feet. One swift hand slipped the glass heart into the pocket of his jeans, and he looked levelly into the face of the closest prospective tormentor.

Light wondered how he'd never realized that L—L who believed, L who persisted, L who gave boundlessly in the hopes that the world might stop taking—was downright heroic.

"Not you," the man said, his lip curling as Light's mind scampered, raced, and fell over the first hurdle; the lackey swung the butt of his rifle to indicate— "Him."

Time should have stopped, but it barreled right on quite despite Light's arid throat and empty head.

His first coherent thought was that they'd sent four guards specifically for the purpose of escorting him to some unsavory fate. _Four_. That was kind of flattering. Did they really think they'd need four guards to drag him out of here, blinded, starved, and staggering?

Then he saw the muscles in L's back tighten and realized who the guards were for.

"_No_," L said.

One of the men stepped towards him, and L tensed.

There was a sick popping sound and a streak of white, then a wet collision—a _bright_ splash of blood and a choking curse, and silver flashed, and droplets splattered on Light's cheek as he ducked away—

It took him a full three seconds to realize that L had dislocated his left thumb and whipped the loose end of the handcuffs against the hapless guard's face with all of his strength.

Personally, he was blaming his sluggish brain on the dehydration.

Four and three-quarters minutes later, he was tied to a board with a sopping cloth draped over his face, the water was descending again, and he was forsaking that heartless bitch irony and everything she stood for.

He writhed hard enough to leave new welts on his wrists, but his restraints didn't give.

_Waterwaterwater_—it was _heavy_; it _hurt_—_waterwaterwaterwater_—in his nose, in his mouth; his eyes jammed shut so hard the black of his eyelids looked red—_waterwaterwaterrushingpressingcold_—he couldn't breathe, couldn't breathe, couldn't fucking _breathe_—_everywhereeverythingnothingelse_—drowning—water, water, everywhere, and _no air in his lungs_—

Someone drew the sodden cloth away, and he gasped, coughed, gulped in dizzingly greedy breaths like they were going out of style.

Which, at this rate, they might well be.

Oxygen was _so_ last season.

"Well?" an unseen figure prompted idly.

"I don't know anything!" he protested, voice cracking, too shrill and frail to hold. "I _don't_! What do you _want_…?"

No answer, not that he'd expected one.

Funny, wasn't it—Light Yagami, the Chief Director's model son, To-Oh's freshman representative, an idol, an Adonis…

Strapped to a table, pleading for his life, screaming like a child.

He would have vomited a long time ago if he'd had anything left to lose.

_Please let this nightmare have an end._

He'd die if that meant it would be over. _Just let it be, let it be, make it stop—_

They crushed the black cloth to his face, and the world closed like a flower in the dark. The flood came, purgatory, and again he drowned and couldn't die.

—

At least his hair was clean.

And he wasn't thirsty anymore.

He didn't think he'd be thirsty ever again.

They let go, and the door shut, and the hinges screeched, and the voice that loved him murmured gently. He was soaked to the bone, but he'd lost the luxury of feeling, and he couldn't care. He wanted to sleep. He just wanted to _sleep_. When he woke up, he'd be in his bed, and he'd laugh about this, nervously, nervously, and move haltingly on.

He crumpled into L's arms and broke.

Dry sobs.

—

He opened his eyes. No difference.

L's fingers stroked his hair. He could breathe.

L hadn't patronized him with promises. He hadn't sworn that things would be okay. He had just held on, held on tightly until the shaking stopped.

Light coughed. L's palm caressed his forehead. His hair was still a little damp. L's thumb was reassembled; it had swelled considerably.

Silence.

"I want to go home," he whispered.

_Child, child, child, child._

It was a good mantra; you could march to that.

"I know, Light-kun," L whispered back. "I know."

It was only minutes after that that they came for L again and tore him away. He kissed Light's wrists as the door hinge announced the arrivals, and then he was gone.

He was scared, but more than that, he was… relieved. Relieved it wasn't him.

He told himself that he knew L could take it and had previous evidence to confirm as much—but mostly, it just wasn't him.

_Coward, coward, coward, child._

He curled up on the cold cement and pretended his arms around him belonged to someone else.

—

There were indistinguishable voices in the hall, and they were approaching the door.

_Coward, coward, coward—_

Something. He was going to do something. He was going to stand up—he dragged himself to his feet and pushed them, one and then the other, until they carried him to the wall—and _do something_.

The voices grew louder as they drew progressively nearer, and he positioned himself by the door—he knew where it was by now. Blood beat in his temples, and his head spun; he pinned himself down and forced himself to think straight. Whoever opened the door wouldn't expect him to be here, and he would have a perfect window—as it were—to push up on their shoulders and sling the handcuff chain before their neck; he'd throw his weight backwards in opposition, and he might have a chance to kill his victim before the others brought him down.

Who knew what might happen after that? He wasn't thinking that far ahead. He wasn't thinking past the moment when whoever walked into his trap stopped kicking.

He spread his wrists loosely for maximum reach, the chain links singing softly, and bent his knees, sinking into a ready position not unlike the one he assumed playing tennis (which he had done, once, in an era he could barely remember). Someone turned the door handle, and the hinges cleared their collective throat.

The door slid, and a searing ray of light broke into the room; he'd forgotten that. Eyes narrowed, he poised himself to strike.

A figure stepped into the new-made patch of gray, and Light darted forward, leapt, and swung, looping the length of the chain over the unsuspecting head and then hurling his weight backward, clutching the edges of the cuffs trying to save his wrists one more wound, gritting his teeth and heaving as hard as his trembling arms would allow—

"Holy _fuck_!" his victim screamed, scrabbling at the chain, and maybe Light was too deprived of everything safe and sane to tell, but it sounded an awful lot like—

"Matsuda!" Watari shouted, and something that was almost certainly a gun gleamed, and Light very hastily scrambled forward, trying to release the tension—

"Holy fuck, Matsuda!" he cried, struggling to extricate himself before he got shot or bitten.

"_Light_?" Matsuda demanded, trying to turn to look and succeeding only in getting better tangled. "Holy _fuck_!"

"Both of you, stop moving _now_," Watari ordered, voice sharper than Matsuda's badge where it was digging into Light's chest.

Obediently they froze.

"Thank you," Watari said. He stepped forward and separated the two of them with the usual stunning efficiency, a meticulousness that was never ungentle. "And what does that even mean? Isn't that a nonsense expletive?"

"Those are the best kinds of expletives," Matsuda put in. "If they make sense, you end up insulting somebody."

"Are you all right?" Watari asked Light, taking his shoulders to steady him.

"Close enough," Light managed. "Where's L?"

There was a grim, ruthless determination in Watari's eyes.

"We," he declared, "are going to find out."

Dumbly, eyes still adjusting, Light followed Matsuda and Watari down the hall.

"Your dad's with Aizawa at the other end of the compound," Matsuda was telling him. "We brought everyone, and a whole lot of guys Watari had flown in—"

Light's head was either a merry-go-round or a receptacle of wool and cotton balls. Or possibly both. Or it was empty. Or he was dreaming; his feet were—well, _light_, almost weightless, and the blood roaring in his ears had long since drowned out Matsuda's explanation-consolations, but his arms were heavy, and the breath wasn't fitting in his lungs quite right—

At Watari's nod, Matsuda kicked in the next door, and Light dragged himself back to Earth. Mogi joined them, and a calm man wearing black, carrying a formidable gun—one of Watari's recruits, no doubt—and there was silence past the threshold, and he coaxed one foot forward so he could look—

L was kneeling on the floor—oh, he wouldn't like that—and the skeleton man stood behind him, grasping his hair—which wasn't right at all; that was Light's job—and keeping him upright—which was _unspeakably_ wrong—and pushing a slender semiautomatic against the back of his head.

He wasn't taking any chances, either; there were three others with AK-47s similarly aimed.

"If you kill him," Watari noted levelly, gloved fingers tight around his weapon where it was trained on Thomas Wergild's forehead, "you'll get nothing."

"Which is more than I'll get," Wergild replied, "if I let him go."

Light fumbled for a handhold on the wall behind him; his knees were about to give way.

"What do you want, Wergild?" Watari snapped.

Black eyes gleamed from their socket-pits. "Amnesty," was the reply.

Light caught L's eyes. L smiled faintly and shrugged, his face even whiter than was its custom.

"Not a chance in hell," he told his captor.

Wergild smiled thinly. "I guess we'll find out," he said.

L looked to Watari and blinked twice.

A dart of white and faded blue; L had somersaulted backwards and kicked the gun right of Wergild's hand, and gunshots rang, deafening in the closed space, from everywhere, and the small supernovas at the ends of the gun barrels scalded Light's eyes—

And something smashed into his side and fixed him to the wall, empowered by pure momentum, overwhelming, but then he was loose, and sliding, and… sinking… and his palms where they'd leapt to his hip were too warm, but everything else was faint and… cold…

A bullet.

_Really? After all that?_

_Come on, world. You can do better._

The world apparently begged to differ, as it very sulkily went dark.

Which figured, really. It wasn't like he'd had enough of _that_.

—

A rumbling and a shaking, ambient and inclusive; he was conscious of a pain that would be blinding if he met it head-on. He poked at it askance and forced his eyelids to rise.

L's arms were around him, and the gray eyes were so wide Light thought he'd fall up into them.

Curious, he prodded at the agony again and hastily recoiled.

"What the fuck happened?" he managed to slur. They were in a car. He was in L's arms in a car, so they must have been safe. It was safe to let the blurry dark encroaching at the edge of his vision reclaim him.

L's voice quavered, and his grip tightened. "You were shot, Light-kun," he announced.

It was heavy. Everything was heavy, everything except the corners of his lips, which curled with a strange, diabolical amusement he wasn't sure he wanted to own.

"Oh," he mused. "Is that all?"

Things were so hazy that it took him a long moment to realize that L was laughing and crying at the same time.

He smiled and drifted… drifted to…

_Cake… and L…_

_And maybe some brownies. But they'd better have walnuts._

Some distant part of him asked why he thought they needed any more nutcases around here.

He told it to shut the fuck up and let him sleep.

—

Everything was white when he awoke. For a long second, an endless one, he thought he must be blind after all.

Or that he'd died. But there was no fire and brimstone, and neither was there cake and L, so he couldn't be in hell or heaven, which didn't leave many alternatives.

As he stirred, however, he blinked the world back into being, and plaintive nerve signals began to demystify his condition. He was lying in a bed, supported by the shallowly-angled slope of the topmost portion, plugged into a lot of machines that beeped insistently and winked colored eyes. There was a tremendous, throbbing ache in his abdomen, the epicenter just above his right hip, and he was wearing one of those terrible hospital gowns.

The _indignity_.

As if breathing in these germs wasn't bad enough.

He laughed to himself, quietly, his voice reduced to a soundless wheeze. He was, without a doubt, the filthiest thing in this room.

There was a creak, and as hinges came to mind, he turned more violently than he should have, feeling emaciated muscles cry in protest—but when he shifted his narrow perception, he found only L, leaning forward where he was curled on a steel and plastic chair, extending a tentative hand towards Light's forearm where it lay limply on the blanket.

Light smiled. "Hello," he whispered.

L's fingers ghosted over his wrist, eschewing the plastic patient's bracelet in favor of the half-healed mementos of confinement.

"Please don't almost die on me again, Light-kun," he murmured. "Or at least warn me in advance if you intend to try."

"I'll do my best," Light told him, grinning slowly, a warmth spreading from his chest all the way to his fingertips.

L smiled back, hand closing gently around Light's for a volume-speaking moment before he blinked at a sudden recollection.

"Light-kun will be wanting food," he noted.

"Light-kun will be wanting to eat everything in the universe," Light replied, realizing that it was true.

L stood, shuffled over to the table against the wall, and retrieved a tray that made Light unreasonably happy to see hospital food.

"You must start out with something mild," L explained, carefully taking his seat and holding the tray within Light's reach. "And be sure to eat slowly and to drink a great deal. If you don't take your time, odds are you'll throw it up again before it has done you any good."

Light glanced at him, unable to keep from smirking a little. "That must have been difficult for you," he commented.

L grimaced. "Light-kun," he said, "has no idea."

When L's arms were wavering from the weight of the tray—it didn't take long, which wasn't much of a surprise; he'd been through more than Light had, up to the gunshot wound portion of the program, and he probably hadn't spent nearly as much of his recovery time sleeping—the dear detective balanced it on Light's lap, climbed carefully onto the bed, and curled up next to him. The thumb at his lips rose periodically to itch impatiently at the gauze protecting the gash on his cheek.

It was the blandest meal Light had ever eaten, and indisputably the best.

—

Light didn't know who was holding whom; they both had their arms wrapped around the other, gently and securely.

To tell the truth, he didn't really care.

"How long until they let me go?" he asked L's hair, in which his face was partially buried.

"You're being released tomorrow morning," L mumbled into his neck, "provided that all goes well."

"I want a shower," Light heard himself declare.

"Watari made me take three; I don't know if I've ever been cleaner in my life."

"I want twelve," Light's voice was saying. "And I'll distinguish them by drying off after every one and having a cup of tea."

But some part of him was realizing that he didn't want a shower—not at all. That he didn't want water beating down on his face. That he might not want it ever again.

"Mmm," L breathed, a gentleness to it. "Or perhaps a very long bath. You could drink tea _while_ you were taking it."

He knew. He understood. L could do that—could see right through him to what was beneath. It was every bit as wonderful as it was infuriating.

Light smiled into L's incorrigible hair. "It could be a bubble bath."

"Or twelve bubble baths."

"Twelve is a nice, round number."

"I will bring you the tea, Light-kun."

"Mmm," Light returned, and perhaps L saw that, too—saw that what he meant was, _Good. I think that's a fair trade for my heart._

His logical faculties didn't seem to have suffered during the trauma, at least.


	5. Bathtub Logic

_Author's Note: MiaoShou and I had a fascinating conversation about some of this once. Credit where it's due! ^^_

_Srsly tho… what is all this frigging PLOT? XD_

_

* * *

chapter v. bathtub logic_

Drawn from the warm mists of a dream, Light opened his eyes to the sound of the door being gently shut. It was his father.

Well, here was the moment of truth he'd talked about back in that revelatory hell. He felt his grip on L tightening fractionally, and L's fingers smoothed the hairs at the back of his neck in answer.

Soichiro could hardly have missed the general display, but if he hesitated, it was only for a moment—a single, isolated hiccup in his hasty progression to the bedside.

"How are you feeling, Light?" he prompted.

"Like I've been shot," Light responded, letting his expression settle into a shaky smile.

His father smiled back thinly, and L moved unobtrusively to allow him to put a warm hand on his son's shoulder. "They promise me you'll be fine," he related. "Though it is certainly possible that they're just trying to get me to stop bothering them."

"Either way," Light decided, laying a hand over his father's, "it's good to know."

L peeked out around Light's neck, thumb hovering at his lips. "Yagami-san," he said, "what would you think of Light-kun accompanying me to Britain?"

There was an epic pause—an ellipsis from Virgil's stylus.

"I'm doing _what_?" Light demanded.

"If you are willing, Light-kun," L amended, blinking up at him from next to his shoulder.

"Why the hell would we go to Britain?" Light persisted, eyes narrowing.

How wonderful it was that narrowing his eyes made a _difference_ in his visual perception.

L blinked at him a little more, presumably attempting to seem non-threatening.

Light was wise to his tricks—particularly the adorable ones. They were the most potent.

"I imagine," L explained slowly, "that Light-kun would be well-advised to take some time away from the case after sustaining such an injury as he has, and the facilities I have established in England, combined with the healthful effects of the fresh air in the countryside, would certainly be more conducive to a full recovery than the strenuousness of Ground Zero of the Kira case."

"But—" he began.

His father gripped his shoulder. "Light," he cut in gently, "maybe Ryuzaki's right."

_Et tu, Dad?_

…perhaps he should save the allusions until after he'd recuperated a bit more.

"You've been working yourselves ragged on this case, both of you," his father continued, "and it's clearly not safe to be out in the open. Maybe it would be best if you backed away for a little while. At least get out of the city—who knows who else Wergild might have told about his plans? We were lucky this time—lucky that the phone tracker led us to the shipping yard, and that Watari managed to gain access to the real estate records, and that we tracked him down at all—but we might not be so lucky again, if it came to that. We can still communicate through the computers, like we did with L before, and you'll be involved in every part of the process, just one step removed from the action. You'll be safer that way." Light searched his father's face, and it was as always—firm, solemn, and honest to a fault. "Light, I'm with him on this one."

Conspiracy, all right.

Light looked at L, who was still blinking at him innocently, all vast gray eyes and thick black lashes.

"We have reserved a few rooms at a hotel just outside of the city," he murmured, "until Watari finishes making the travel arrangements."

On the one hand, Light wanted to tell L to shove the plane tickets up his ass.

On the other, he never wanted to let the man out of his sight again.

He sighed.

"You win," he said.

L's eyes lit up, and the concession was almost worth it.

—

Light did have to admit that L had his best interests at heart.

Or, at the last, his best hygienic interests.

The bathtub was a wonder to behold.

It was an even greater wonder to be _in_.

He could barely contain the urge to strip his clothes off before he'd even properly closed the door, but somehow, he made it into the room with decorum preserved and all dignity intact, and only then did he succumb to the overpowering allure of the rising steam and ease himself gently into the water.

It stung like a bitch in the wounds, but the doctors had told him that was only natural, and all should be well as long as he didn't aggravate them too much.

He lathered his arms slowly, savoring everything—the surface tension, the soapsuds, the steam, the rippling waves, the cold air against his knees where they escaped the water's reach.

He did everything in his power not to think of other contexts in which water might not be escapable. This was his now. He owned this—he controlled the circumstances, and he could change them or end the whole thing whenever he so chose. This was not the same.

He slid back, tucking his chin against his chest, and submerged himself almost up to his nose.

He'd only just closed his eyes—carefully, carefully, ready to open them if the anxiousness crept up behind him—when the door whispered over the tiles of the floor. He glanced up to find, of course, L, slouching briskly along, toting a fairly sizeable bottle of viscous liquid that looked suspiciously like…

"I have brought you some bath bubbles, Light-kun," L announced.

Light's first instinct was to curl up in an attempt to make himself at least _slightly _decent—and then he remembered that L had seen him at his absolute worst, and that naked was, in comparison, really nothing to worry about.

Which was kind of liberating for someone like him.

Sure enough, L proceeded to the edge of the tub, where he tilted the bottle and poured a generous portion of its contents into the tub. Light assumed the task of churning up the water to produce as many tiny, opalescent bubbles as humanly possible, noting as he did L's careful neutrality, imagining the dogged, meticulous syllogism behind those eyes—_Light-kun is bathing. One bathes naked. Therefore Light-kun is naked._

It followed.

A thick blanket of bubbles enveloping him now, Light settled again, smiling. Just before he let his eyelids have their heavy way again, he felt something that startled him violently awake.

Fingers. On his feet.

L's fingers.

…it was his toes, wasn't it? He did have pretty nice toes.

L scooped up a handful of bubbles and, perching on the edge of the tub to draw up his knees, smoothed them gently, almost curiously, over the top of Light's foot.

Light tried not to shiver, but it was hopeless.

With a small smile that was partly mischievous, partly gratified, and—maybe?—partly relieved, L stroked a finger over Light's praiseworthy toes, a trail of foam following his fingertip, a gleeful tingling in its wake.

Light wasn't sure what to do. Squirming and giggling did not sound like a particularly good option.

He'd done enough damage to his dignity already; more would fall into the category of graceless overkill.

L dipped his hands into the bubbles (Light froze, his mind going violently, blindly blank with the pure electrical power of anticipation) and ran them over each other, then he leaned forward and brushed a lock of wet hair slowly off of Light's forehead.

"Thank you, Light-kun," he said.

Light wasn't sure if the appreciation was for not bitching about being confined again (albeit in a very palatable hotel this time), or for showing off the goods through the bathwater.

Probably the former, since the latter wasn't even his fault.

It didn't really matter. Either way, L was welcome to it. To him.

"Of course," he responded, meeting L's eyes as best he could through the dark curtain of wild hair that sought to conceal them.

Whichever it was, he wasn't _fully_ comfortable, but he was going to do his damnedest to follow through, and that, he imagined, was the important thing when you got down to it.

…being cooperative was mostly what he meant by "the important thing." Rather than flashing L.

Oh, fuck it; he'd flash anybody he needed to if it would set things right.

L tucked Light's hair behind his ear. "Do you want your tea now, Light-kun?"

"Why don't you get it started," Light replied, "and I'll join you?"

L smiled, eyes sparking. "I have cookies," he divulged.

Light grinned. "Don't keep them waiting," he advised.

The corners of L's lips curled a little higher, and then he bent the panther-kitten body forward to brush them across Light's forehead.

"I will save some for you," L promised, unfolding to his feet to saunter for the door.

Light watched the muscles shift, half-shrouded by the loosely-draping clothes. Hell if _that_ hadn't sounded like a come-on.

Shaking his head, he sank lower in the water, bubbles tickling at his face, and breathed out on the frothy bed about him. It was exquisite, now, to breathe, and to be warm, and to see. Presentation was much of him, and he'd been without it. There was no pretense in the dark. There was nothing to prove.

The thought dredged up questions—questions with open ends and inquisitive implications, questions that surfaced among the bubbles and gleamed yet brighter than their surroundings.

He splashed them away for now. The questions could wait until he was warm, and clean, and ready to risk hearing the answers.

Deep breaths. They weren't out of the woods yet, but he could see the light.

—

He sat down, toweling at his hair, and selected a cookie, because L was waiting for him to take one. Crumbs rained into his lap as he bit into it, but he ignored them, because crumbs on his pants seemed awfully unimportant nowadays.

"L," he said, "how much of it's real?"

L tilted his head. "What do you mean?"

Light gestured to him. "How much of what you appear to be is real?" he prompted. "And how much of it is a front to make you seem eccentric enough to be underestimated?"

L stared at him for a long, long moment, and then he repositioned his feet on the couch cushion, gazing intently at his own toes this time. It was a cat position. A fetal position. A small dying thing's last attempt to avoid being crushed.

"That's a very sudden question, Light-kun," he murmured.

"I'm not trying to be accusatory," Light persisted, "but I want to be squared away now, before… things get complicated again. Just—you know me. You understand me. And—that's a really wonderful thing, and I can't tell you how freeing it is, to be _me_ and know that you'll get it, but I can't _read_ you. Not like that. I don't need an explanation of every single thing you do, but I want to know… where you're coming from. Where you stand." He paused, considering L's current pose. "…sit. Crouch."

A fleeting half-smile flickered across L's face. "Yes," he said slowly. "I know what you mean. It is only that… it is a difficult subject…" He shifted again, leaned forward, and took the largest cookie from the plate of them. "It is a bit of a chicken-and-the-egg argument, Light-kun. I have never been particularly normal, as it were, and, as you said, I made an effort to emphasize the abnormalities in the hopes that I would benefit from being perceived one way or another." He paused, frowning at the wall. "I discovered, however, as I proceeded, that… it became more difficult to distinguish what was an act and what was true. A lot of things _became_ true. There was a theory of performance, Light-kun, in sixteenth-century England, that the Puritans attempted to use to shut down the theaters. The thought was that in order to present something, some image, one must first internalize it to some degree, in order to own it, personalize it, and represent it to an audience. At some point, the act is yours, and you are the act's. Where to draw that line… I don't know, Light-kun. I am a lot of things—as I'm sure you've gathered by this time, stubborn, spoiled, and childish are just the beginning—but… I don't know how _real_ I am, Light. I've never had to be real." He shifted again, eyes flickering over the glinting contours of the tea set. "That's the best approximation I can give. I hope it answers your question."

Light picked a teacup, poured, added sugar cubes until it was just short of overflowing, and pushed it across the table. "It does," he said, smiling a little. "Thank you."

—

"Higuchi?" Light repeated, wrinkling his nose. "He _was_ kind of a sleazeball."

"Eloquently put," L agreed with a momentary hint of the wicked grin. "Though it is sometimes the ostensibly harmless who are in fact the most dangerous."

Light sensed that it was another slantways accusation, possibly an indictment of Misa this time, and he pointedly ignored it.

L gave him a moment to skim the transcripts and scan the pictures that had been lined up in chronological order to outline Higuchi's capture.

Then came the details.

Light squinted. "That's it?" he asked, tipping a finger towards the plain black cover blazoned with just two short words. "You could buy something like that at any stationery store in the country."

"I was skeptical as well," L remarked, thumb to lip for maximum cogitation capacity. "But some highly expedited laboratory results have confirmed that the materials of which this particular notebook is constructed exist nowhere on Earth."

Light sat back uncertainly. "It's always been supernatural," he said slowly, "but this takes it to another level."

"Wait for it," L instructed. He tapped the right arrow key, and a new image appeared.

"…'rules'?" Light muttered, leaning forward again. In English, too—what a pain. "What is this, a _game_?"

"Yes," L replied calmly. "And now we know how it's played."

Light waded through the words, inscribed as they were in a strange, spiky, quixotic hand. _Something's_ hand.

One sentence struck him like a physical blow.

"Thirteen days?" he muttered. "That… would… huh."

L didn't speak, and his face gave nothing away.

"And it kills you if you try to destroy it?" Light drummed his fingernails on the desktop, passing his gaze over the lines as if they'd change. "That's—weird. They don't… fit."

_Damn it, Light._ He'd been out of the hole, and here he was digging it deep again. If this didn't prove his damn dedication to the case, nothing would.

"They're penalties. There wasn't a punitive tone to the rest of it, to the earlier rules on the inside of the front cover." He peered closer. "The writing's all the same, but it's still… odd. More mundanely, you'd think that some—shinigami, some _god_—could think far enough ahead to make space for all the rules on the first page."

He wanted to add _Or use an otherworldly eraser_, but now was not the time to push his luck.

"My thoughts exactly, Light-kun," L murmured, eyes sharp. "Another thing… Apparently anyone who touches the notebook can see the shinigami it belongs to. Her—purportedly _her_—name is Rem."

Light nodded. "The one Higuchi was talking to in the car."

"Precisely." L minimized the current window and double-clicked on a different icon. A very, very strange pencil sketch filled the screen. "Matsuda-san has composed this drawing of the shinigami for us."

Light stared. "…was he drinking before bed?" he managed. "Or was it mixing medications?"

L smiled thinly. "All of the others have confirmed that his rendition is accurate, including your father." L considered the screen. "His shading technique needs some work, but just imagine if Matsuda-san had gone to art school."

Light started to wonder how many rainbows and butterflies would have graced the man's portfolio, then forced himself to focus again, examining the odd pale hair and the single yellow eye. "This is all just… hard to swallow."

"Speaking of swallows," L interjected, sipping at the umpteenth teacup, "Higuchi is singing like one. He believes he will die thirteen days after his last murder; he has no reason not to." He pressed the edge of the rim of the cup to his lips, looking the shinigami up and down. "It's all here, Light-kun," he murmured. "If we prevent Kira from finding you again, we've done it. We've won."

Light crossed his arms over his chest. "That's it, then."

L glanced at him quizzically.

"We'll be running from Kira for the rest of our lives," Light told him, bitterly he knew. "Hiding from what he's laid out. That's all we get from this so-called victory."

After a deep draught of tea, L set the cup down and sighed. "It isn't dignified," he admitted. "I know that. Please don't think I haven't looked at this from every angle I can conjure. If you have suggestions, Light-kun, I'll hear them, but this is quite honestly the best that I can do here and now, with the information that we have."

Light rubbed his face with both hands. "I know," he said. "I get that. And I appreciate it. I'm just—tired."

L smiled sadly. "Of being trapped."

Light looked up at him. There he went again—knowing.

"Right," he confirmed.

L paused and then proffered his cup. "It always helps me," he pledged.

Light smiled. "Thank you," he said, "but I tend to like some tea with my sugar."

—

Forsaking the tea plan altogether, Light returned to the bathtub instead. He was going through the bubble bath syrup at an alarming rate.

The water was so blissfully warm that it was a trial once more to keep himself awake, cradled there, bubbles bobbing about his elbows. He ran his wet hands over his face and through his hair, blinking shining beads of water from his eyelashes. This was the life, really. Kira aside, Kira be _damned_—warm water and peace and quiet could sustain him forever.

Although there was one thing he wouldn't have minded adding to this beautiful equation.

Well, two things.

That was, cake, and L.

Thinking about it, he probably owed cake-and-L fantasies for the fact that he still possessed his sanity.

Which wasn't a bad deal, all told.

He blew a clump of bubbles off of his palm and smiled.


	6. The Best Thing

_Author's Note: Huge final chapter to tie things up ftw! \o/_

_Critiques will be accepted. Complaints will be forwarded to Doctor Gregory House. XD_

_

* * *

chapter vi. the best thing_

Something was buzzing.

Light mumbled a string of words that, had he been properly awake, probably would have been unprintable, and sent a hand venturing out from under the comforter to fumble for his phone on the nightstand. His fingers found the alarm clock, and a box of tissues, and—

—brushed the side of the phone, sending its vibrating trajectory right off of the edge.

"Sonofabitch," he muttered, prying his face from the pillowcase and directing his bleary gaze towards the floor.

"Hello, Light-kun," L said, smiling up at him.

Starting violently, Light made a noise like _EEP_ and automatically hid his face in the pillow again.

The phone was still buzzing.

Light peeked in time to see L flip it open and dangle it by his ear.

"Hello, Amane-san," he said. There was a pause. "I'm well; how are you?" Another pause. "Yes, he is available now, as I have most unkindly awoken him." Still another; L chuckled. "Oh, absolutely. He has a singular talent for sleeping late."

Light growled, and L very absently ruffled his hair, which efficiently erased every thought in his head.

Naturally, it was then that L handed him the phone.

Light cleared his throat twice and brought the phone to his ear. "Hi, Misa," he managed.

"_Light_!" she squealed. "I've been so worried about you, but they wouldn't give me the new number until things had settled down—"

They never had recovered his phone from Wergild's complex. Which he supposed wasn't all that surprising; and which, given L's bottomless bank account, was the least of his worries—particularly since now he had a flashy new one with a camera.

…pun. Ow.

Mornings made him want to die.

All right, no; they just made him want to go back to sleep.

Misa was asking if he was okay, and he hoped they'd been smart enough not to tell her about the gunshot wounds and various other assorted miseries.

"I'm fine," he promised. "We're just staying under the radar for a little while."

She was quiet for a moment. "Yagami-san said you and Ryuzaki are going to England," she remarked.

Light glanced at L, who was unabashedly listening in. "We haven't quite talked it over," he answered.

He imagined Misa sticking out her bottom lip. "Do you _have_ to go?"

Scrubbing at his eyes with his free hand, Light sent L another look. "I don't really know yet," he hedged. "I'll tell you when I know for sure, how about that?"

Sighing forlornly, Misa conceded, "I _guess_." Within the span of a second, of course, she was all perkiness and pep again. "Did you get the package that I sent you?"

Another raised eyebrow was turned upon L, who, tellingly enough, merely blinked indifferently.

"What package?" he prompted unnecessarily.

"My care package," Misa told him. "With cookies and a card and a note I wrote you." There was a beat, but before Light had a chance to respond, Misa preempted him. "You didn't get it," she concluded, "did you?"

"I haven't really gotten any mail…"

"…ah. Well, that's okay. I can keep a secret."

Light frowned. "What does…"

"Don't worry about it, darling!" Misa sang. "Have fun in England! Are you going to see the museums? And Stonehenge? You should see Stonehenge, darling."

Light sought for words to speak in reply, but they scuttled away like cockroaches disappearing beneath a refrigerator.

…case in point.

"I… will see what I can arrange" was the best he could do. "I'll send you something back; would you like that?"

What a stupid question.

"That would be _amazing_, sweetheart!" she enthused. "Do you still have my old address? I think they're going to let me go home soon. Or you could just send it to Matsu, and he could pass it along."

"I'll figure something out," Light promised numbly.

"Thank you, Light," Misa sighed happily. "Guess Misa-Misa should let you get back to important detective work. I love you, darling."

Something tightened in his chest and began to ache. He knew, now, what the word meant. He knew the empty agony of it, of giving it, radiating with it—and projecting the warmth directly into a void.

He knew how she must feel if she'd realized the truth.

"Take care, Misa," he said softly.

She chirped back a parting salutation, and then the line went dead.

Light snapped his phone shut and looked at L, sitting up straight for the purpose.

"You're obstructing my mail, now?" he inquired.

"It might be better," L replied carefully, "if Light-kun did not have any direct contact with outside materials, particularly materials sent from people involved in the case."

Light looked down at the crumpled sheets. "You don't trust me," he summarized.

L shook his head, silky hair swinging. "I trust _Light-kun_," he insisted. "I don't trust Kira. And, whatever else we've seen, I believe that Kira has already acted—that he has already moved. If we react as he presumed we would, Light-kun may fall into his hands again, if that is indeed his intent. If physically distancing Light-kun from the case can prevent such a contingency from being realized, I am willing to go to every effort to keep him away."

Light crossed his legs and ran his hands over his face. So this was what nuclear bombs felt like.

And then he remembered something else Misa had said, something else that didn't quite fit.

"'I think they're going to let me go home soon'?" he repeated, raising his head again to watch L's face for a reaction.

As always, he didn't get anything more than the usual placid blinking.

"Amane-san sent you a piece of the Death Note," L said.

His stomach dropped, and his heart leapt into his throat and throbbed there, strangling him. Blood roared in his ears.

The overall feeling was not too unlike getting shot, as he now knew very well.

"You think touching the Note will make me Kira again," Light heard his voice declare, sounding significantly steadier than the rest of him.

"I suspected that the transmission of the power might be connected to the notebook," L murmured, "and Higuchi has since confirmed the theory in his confessions. I don't know where exactly _Kira_, as an entity, is incarnated, or if he has a form to speak of, but if you touch that notebook, we may lose everything, and I'm not willing to risk that."

The tips of Light's fingers were tingling. "And you think he's laid a trap. That he's anticipated this."

_I am Kira. I was Kira. That—_thing_—was a part of me, _was_ me—_

He wanted another bath. He wanted to scour the crawling knowledge from his skin.

L nodded confirmation.

"And Misa," Light extrapolated shakily, "is the second Kira."

L frowned, swiping the thumb against his lips again. "Perhaps not as such—not _now_, at least. I think she has been contacted, somehow, but I don't think she has regained the power." He sat down, uninvited, on the edge of Light's bed and pulled up his knees, wrapping his free arm around them and tapping the pad of his thumb against his bottom lip. Light tried to focus on what he was saying, which was not an easy task. "There must be more than one notebook; I'll try to get the shinigami to verify it, though I doubt she'll play fair. Amane-san is aware of what happened before, but she doesn't have the notebook that she had then."

"How do you know?" Light asked feebly.

L smiled contentedly. "If she did," he responded, "I would most likely be dead."

That _did_ it.

Light lay down and tugged the comforter out from under L's feet. The other man looked startled.

"I'm going back to bed," Light explained.

L sighed.

But he stroked Light's hair until he fell asleep.

—

By the next afternoon, the bruises on L's dislocated-and-relocated thumb had almost disappeared, and the searing pain in Light's abdomen had faded to a bearable humming hurt, like a radiator behind a wall, which he could tune out and ignore.

So it was that they boarded a plane and made their way towards England.

There had been some emotional farewells at the airport. His mother and Sayu had each cried a little—he supposed because as much as he'd been absent all this time, he'd never been _out of the country_—and, hugging Dad tightly, he'd actually thought for a second that his father was never going to let him go.

Matsuda gave him a hug, too. Misa was conspicuously absent, and Light wasn't sure whether to be guilt-ridden or relieved.

L and Watari had a quiet conversation just before the security checkpoint, and then the latter clasped the former's white hand for a long moment, smiling.

Light liked that.

He had, of course, deliberately neglected to mention that he'd never actually been on an international flight before, let alone one that would ferry them across two continents.

As expected, L understood immediately from the rapt attention he paid to the safety lecture and the way his fingers clenched around the armrests as the plane first shuddered into the air. Accordingly, he made a point of covering Light's hand with his, blithely disregarding the looks the gesture garnered from their fellow passengers.

"It's statistically safer to be by the aisle, Light-kun," L informed him. "You're much more likely to survive should the plane crash." The man in the window-seat next to Light looked perturbed. "I wouldn't worry about that, however," L went on pleasantly, "since the odds of the plane crashing—or, for that matter, being hijacked—are extraordinarily low compared to much more ordinarily dangerous things like household accidents and driving on the highway."

Light grinned despite himself. "Very comforting, Ryuzaki," he commented.

Weirdly, though, it was.

L tilted his head like a puppy, eyes wide. "Did you know, Light-kun, that the rate of death by suicide is twice that of homicide?" He paused. "Or it was before Kira, at least, when that study was done."

Light grinned a little wider. "People are staring at you," he noted, which of course caused most of them to look hastily away.

L looped his arm through Light's and nestled in against his shoulder. "That's because they're jealous I have your attention," he replied.

—

A sleek black car swooped up to the sidewalk outside the terminal, and Light recoiled instinctively from the tinted windows and polished paint. L, however, stepped unconcernedly forward and tossed his bag into the trunk. When Light had tentatively followed suit, he found L already opening the back door for him.

"After you, Light-kun," he urged.

Well, if _L_ said it was okay…

Soft leather seats welcomed him, and he met the kind smile of an elderly man with gleaming glasses and twinkling eyes, who extended a hand around the seatback.

"I'm Roger," he said in English. "I take it you're the famous Light Yagami?"

There was a genuineness to his manner that banished any potential for an insult.

Light shook the man's warm hand, smiling cautiously back. "Famous and not infamous, I hope," he responded. "It's a pleasure to meet you."

Sliding into place beside him, L flashed Roger a smile of his own. "I hope you've left—"

"—Amos in charge?" Roger supplied, winking. "Don't worry. I told the boys they wouldn't be allowed to stay up to meet you unless they were on their best behavior."

Light looked uncertainly at L. "Where exactly are we going?" he asked.

L stroked his arm with a long-fingered hand. Petting Light seemed to be L's new favorite way of distracting him.

It definitely worked.

"Somewhere," L answered, "where no one will send any packages."

—

Light was drowsing against the headrest, L's fingers woven through his, when the car slowed, gravel crunching beneath the tire treads, to a stop. Stirring, he sat up and scraped a hand across his eyes, still feeling weak and bleary from his interminable stint in the dense stagnancy of the plane, and peered out the windshield. A wrought-iron gate was giving way, opening a long drive, pale in the night, from the spread of which there rose a vast, almost fantastical mansion—a great, grand house of gray stone and shale roof, a friendly fortress, tremendous and imposing but somehow radiant with an undeniable warmth. With security.

Roger pulled right up to the front steps and parked. L's grin gleamed in the dark.

"Wh…" Light managed, staring stupidly at the towering façade.

"Welcome," L told him, "to Wammy's House."

Before Light had even come close to processing the place—let alone the _situation_—L was ushering him up the steps, and Roger was unlocking the broad front door, and then he had stepped over the threshold and into an alternate reality that barely overlapped with the one he'd left among the airport's unfeeling plastic and steel. There was worn stone beneath his feet, frayed rugs stretching out ahead, art on the walls, thick velvet curtains drawn demurely shut for the night, an immense fireplace standing proudly in the room beyond, visible just around a corner…

It was then that a blond rocket soared down the stairs and collided with L.

"You're _here_!" it cried triumphantly.

L laid a hand on the head that was currently burying its face affectionately in his chest, a catlike temperament infused with a puppy's indomitable enthusiasm.

"You're up late," L replied, and the human projectile peeled itself away from hugging L long enough to reveal that it was, in fact, a boy of about Sayu's age, dressed in black and possessed of a slightly mad grin, vivid yellow bangs sliding into a set of bright blue eyes.

"Amos said," the boy reported, "and I quote, 'Since you two managed to refrain from blowing anything up or inflicting any permanent psychological trauma, you can stay up until L comes home.'"

A strange shiver dribbled down Light's spine at the word.

_Home_.

Maybe L felt it, too; his indulgent smile was wide and wholehearted.

The dynamo caught sight of Light and hastily released his grip on L, retreating a pace and standing up straighter.

"Who the hell are you?" he demanded.

"Please be polite, Mello," L reprimanded gently. "This is Light Yagami, and he's my guest." The boy eyed Light, half-suspicious, half-defiant. "Light-kun," L remarked, "this is Mello."

"It's nice to meet you," Light said in English. Mello muttered something in return, and Light shot at L, in Japanese this time, "I wasn't aware I'd be babysitting."

L's smile was slightly wicked now. He knew something Light didn't.

Something, Light imagined, that he was about to find out.

Mello wrinkled his nose and replied, in slightly accented Japanese, "We don't need a _babysitter_. Plus we'd tear you to pieces."

"They would," L noted airily, looking to the foot of the stairs. "Hello, Matt; hello, Near."

A slim redhead pushed a pair of goggles onto his forehead, revealing curious green eyes and the strip of freckles across his nose, and a smaller boy with startling white hair and huge pale eyes, dressed all in white, hovered just behind him, sizing Light up cautiously.

"I take it you've been good?" Roger asked from behind Light's shoulder, directing the question at the newcomers, who nodded wordlessly as they descended the rest of the way.

It was strange, Light noted, that any progeny of L's would be _shy_—though Near's reservation seemed to be based more in wariness than genuine social anxiety.

Matt reached them first and hugged L tightly before stepping back to make way for his colorless colleague, who threaded little arms around L's waist in turn. Near turned his white face up to meet L's eyes.

"We missed you," he said.

L smiled softly and laid a hand over the unruly loose curls. "I have missed being here."

"How did the case go?" Mello piped up, hands twisting excitedly in the hem of his shirt. "You must've won, or you wouldn't be here."

Light was a bit startled before he realized that the sort of children who would greet L in the foyer would know.

L smiled again. "Why don't I explain the details tomorrow morning?" he proposed. "I know Light-kun and I are tired from traveling, and I'm sure you three have had a very productive day as well."

As if it was some sort of complicated code—which, given the circumstances, perhaps it _was_—Matt and Mello very obediently snatched the suitcases and started careening up the stairs, likely more than loudly enough to wake anyone in the House who'd dared try to sleep.

L followed them, and Near followed him, and Light, helplessly out of his element, followed the both of them, up the stairs and down a hall, where a door was opened, and his suitcase was shoved unceremoniously through it. Wincing, he trailed it in, dodged Mello as the boy scampered back out, discovered a cozy living space, and turned in time to see L bidding his apprentices—or whatever, precisely, they were—a fond goodnight. The process required giving out three more hugs, which the older two claimed slightly self-consciously but with no small fervor.

That done, as Matt and Mello bounded down the stairs with Near in tow, L picked up his suitcase, smiled at Light, and continued along the hall, presumably towards a room of his own.

Numbly, Light sank down on the bed, the mattress creaking sympathetically.

This place—it was warm, deeply warm, warm in the floorboards and the walls, because it was a safe place. L had opened it to him, and he was safe here.

He also felt more alone than he ever had in his life.

They all knew the codes, the passwords—these _children_ could reach L, find L, step forward and put both arms around him; they could be assured of him, because he loved them, and it was the sort of love that didn't fail or fade. It was unconditional and insuppressible.

And he… had nothing. No buzzwords, no keys, and not a lot of hope.

He curled up on the bed and closed his eyes. He wanted to go home. He wanted the certainty of it, the absolutes, the stasis. At least he knew what he had there, whether or not it amounted to much. Whether or not it fulfilled him, it was a constant.

He folded his arms and buried his face in them. He was stuck here, trapped with a multitude of people who could finish L's sentences faster, who hugged him before bed, who could _claim_ him, and who belonged to him in return. People who had the things Light wanted and didn't even know how lucky they were.

"Light-kun?"

He opened his eyes. L stood in the doorway, hands in his pockets, looking so innocent that Light wanted to hurt him.

He was tangible when he was bleeding. He was real.

"Are you settled?" L asked, the slight tilt of his head betraying his efforts to analyze the situation before he waded deeper into it. "Is the room all right?"

Light looked at him until the other man shifted his weight.

"What are we doing, L?" he asked into the stretching silence.

A shadow of a frown crossed L's face. "What d—"

"What am I?" Light cut in. "What am I to you? I let myself believe it was a euphemism, but I think I really am—I'm a guest. Visiting. I'm not meant to stay; it's not supposed to be permanent. I thought maybe you were always like that, but they're in. You're capable of letting people get close. Just not me."

L looked away, and his voice was low but intent. "Light-kun—"

"No," Light interrupted again. "Think about it. I had it all wrong before—thinking you'd only be willing to face it in the dark. It's the opposite; it's always backwards with you—on the plane, in the car, I'm yours, but the second we're safe, I'm outside again. Is it that you really can't indulge it when there aren't social restraints? Or am I part of your mask now—another accessory for the act?"

Both of L's hands rose to the doorframe, gliding aimlessly up and down the uneven places in the paint.

"Can we talk in the kitchen?" he asked quietly. "I can't think."

…he had to _think_ about this?

Light heaved himself up, crossed the room, and swept past him out the door, ignoring the inconvenient fact that he had no idea where the kitchen was located.

That was what trial and error was for.

Fortunately, Wammy's had been very logically designed, and Light found the right room on his second try. He stood by the window and looked out at the night, trying to push back the weary ache that the microwave clock's fatalism set in his bones. L retrieved a piece of cake from the fridge, divested it of its plastic wrap protection, and silently sat down at the table to go at it with a fork.

Light was determined not to entertain deviant thoughts, and, by virtue of pure willpower, mostly succeeded.

L set his fork down with half of the cake left.

"Light," he said softly, "I have never in my life attempted to do what I'm doing now. I am fast discovering that the theory and the reality are worlds apart. Help me. Tell me what you want me to be."

Light wheeled on him. "I want you to be _you_," he retorted, more harshly than he'd intended. "Isn't that the whole _point_?"

L didn't bat an eyelash. Light feared his petulance was getting predictable. "What do you want _me_ to do, then?" L prompted. "I meant what I said, Light, but all I can guarantee is that I will try. Do you want public displays of affection? You can have them. Physical intimacy? You've got it." With a sudden dark-eyed violence, he pushed the plate across the table, the fork clattering off early in its trajectory, ceramic grating against the wood. "Take it all, Light. It's yours."

"You would," Light said, hearing a hollow laugh claw free of his throat. "You _would_ mock me for loving you."

L's eyes smoldered, and venom seethed on his tongue. "Do you remember what I said Misa sent you, Light?" he asked coldly. "She sent you a note reminiscing about all the wonderful things you'd done for her. It was covered in heart-shaped stickers, and it was written on a piece of the Death Note. I don't know how or when she managed to tear out a page, but she knows that you were Kira—knows it as a certainty. She wouldn't take that risk otherwise; the girl is smarter than she pretends to be, because intelligence isn't cute and doesn't sell."

Light's mouth was dry all over again. "But you didn't arrest her," he recalled slowly.

…she hadn't been at the airport.

He swallowed. "_Did_ you?"

"No, Light," L answered, knuckles going white where his fingers clenched about his knees. "Because _you_ wouldn't have wanted me to."

Light splayed a hand on the countertop, trying to find an anchor. "What did you do wi—"

"I burned it."

Light looked up sharply. "The rule was fake after all."

L nodded once.

A hot tension was rising in Light's chest, grasping his shoulders, tightening them. "And if it hadn't been," he continued flatly, "you would be dead." His voice was rising as his patience wore dangerously thin. "You played the odds. You gambled your life on a _longshot_, L—without even _asking_ what I thought either way." His lip was curling, and he didn't care to stop it. "After everything we worked through together, you trusted our own damn judgment, and you just fucking _went for it_, because it's not like anyone would give a shit if you _died_, it's not like you're _irreplaceable_, it's not like anyone cares about you more than you care about your fucking _self_—"

L was on his feet, standing straighter than Light had ever seen him, and his eyes were ablaze.

"Will you stop thinking about _you_ for five seconds?" he snapped. "Open your _eyes_, Light. I talked to the shinigami. I let Misa go free. I brought you _here_, to a place most people have never _seen_, to a place most people _shouldn't _see, because it protects children who can't afford to _be_ seen—because I _believe_ in you. I am _trying_, Light, to _save_ you, and I have been all along. Do you think Kira would surrender you? Do you think he could find an apter subject, an apter _object_, a better _possession_, in the whole of the _world_? Not a chance. You are the best thing he ever could have happened on, and he's not going to let you go. Neither, Light, am _I_."

"Back to the dominance battle," Light sneered. "L versus Kira, the grudge match of the century. White and black again, just the way you like it—just the case, none of those damn feelings getting in the way."

L slammed his hand down on the table so hard the dishes jumped.

"Do you _honestly_ think I would have given this fucking _much_ if it was _just the case_?"

Light was shouting, too. Some part of him remembered that children were trying to sleep.

"You don't_ feel_ anything!"

"Hit me, and I'll bruise!" L fired back. "Cut me, and I'll bleed! _Touch_ me, and I'll _feel_, Light! I'm a human being, whether I like it or not! I've spent my entire life trying to disconnect, to disentangle, to be impartial and to be _just_, and one fine day, you waltzed in and made that impossible. And now you come here thinking you've been cheated, telling _me_ to feel? Why don't you _kill_ me, Light? Why don't you destroy everything I've ever built? You've been doing a good job so far, but I wish you'd hurry, because I _feel_ it, and it hurts like _hell_."

The fight went out of Light's thudding heart, and into the vacuum seeped despair. He sat down on the floor, the handle of the cabinet door digging into his back, and covered his face so that L wouldn't see him crying.

L knew. L always knew.

Denim whispered on the linoleum, and L sat beside him and slid his arms around Light's shoulders, leaning his head against Light's, cake-scented breath brushing by him.

"We're not simple people, Light-kun," he sighed. "We're selfish, and we're cold, and we're never simple."

"I love you," Light managed. "That's simple."

Two slender fingers guided his jaw, drawing his face from his hands, tiling his chin. Tear trails slicked his cheeks, but he met L's gaze through blurry eyes as best he could.

"You know it's not that easy," L said.

"Yeah," Light said. "I know."

L took a deep breath, angled his head, and kissed him—gently, warmly, kindly.

Simply.

—

Light discounted that decorum thing and set an elbow on the table, the better to prop his chin on his palm. L was in the process of outlining the Kira case to the boys—extremely creatively and evasively, leaving out heaping quantities of information without forsaking anything too crucial.

L was good at lying, after all. Lying, and bending the truth.

Mello was eating chocolate in cereal format, and Matt had a bowl of the marshmallow-laden stuff, the composition of which favored the carbohydrate cataclysm part of the combination. Between the two of them, Light had lost his appetite.

Near was slowly and systematically spooning unflavored oatmeal into his mouth. At least someone here was sane.

Or had a sensitive stomach, anyway.

L was approaching the end of the sordid tale, and Mello's spoon was dripping milk onto the table as he held it halfway to his mouth, completely rapt.

Light vaguely hoped L would finish with "And then we all died." Mello might drop the spoon altogether.

Instead, he concluded with a small smile and "Persist, and persevere. Nothing is impossible to understand."

Light begged to differ, but he didn't have time to interject before L had taken to bare feet and met Light's eyes. The slightest motion of his head said, _Shall we go?_

Light shrugged and stood, and L excused them and led the way up the stairs.

"I've concluded," L announced as they started into the hall, "that you want proof of my affections, rather than merely my assurances."

Light smiled thinly. "I'm a detective, L," he reminded him. "I like evidence."

"Evidently," L replied.

They'd passed Light's door, but just as he began to realize the significance, one of L's slim, strong hands closed around his wrist, jerked him into the furthest room, and shoved him up against the door. Almost before the mechanism had clicked shut behind him, L's fingers were clenched in the front of his shirt, and a hot mouth ghosted over his neck.

Light grinned wickedly.

"_Well_."

He curled his fingers in L's thick hair and pulled him in for a destructive kiss.

_Mine_.

L made a contented noise in the back of his throat, and Light ducked to nip gently at his white neck. L's fingers worked the buttons on his shirt, pushing his collar impatiently aside in favor of outlining intricate tracery on his skin. Light murmured, and L sighed softly in answer, nails grazing Light's shoulder beneath the constricting fabric, his free hand fumbling past Light's waist for—

—the doorknob?

L locked the door, then spread the hand responsible on the small of Light's back.

Oh.

_Oh_.

…ooh.

L gripped his shirt to pull him further into a room that was mostly pale and plain—he had substantially more important things to do than to observe it in detail—and pushed him down on the bed, the down comforter cool where his shirt had slipped, L's hands warm as they fought the rest of the buttons free—

Light's heart pattered wildly in his ears, and his breaths hitched, catching in his throat, as he ran his hands down L's sides. L's fingers wandered down his ribs, the gray eyes bright and curious watching the procession. L looked up to meet Light's gaze, and at the bewilderment in it, he smiled gently and… stopped.

Gently, contentedly, L draped himself over Light instead of venturing further, nestling his head into the curve of Light's neck, soft hair against flushed skin.

"There's time, Light-kun," he murmured, lips curling into another smile. "There's forever."

"Something's digging into my thigh," Light announced.

L laughed—which wasn't very nice—and then shifted to slide a hand into his pocket in order to retrieve its contents. He offered his prize up for scrutiny.

It was small, glass, pink, and very familiar.

"That would be my heart, Light-kun," he remarked.

Light wrapped his fingers around L's, closing both their hands around it. "It's nice," he decided.

"It's yours," L said.

…yeah, his mother was never getting that thing back.

He didn't even want to think about the symbolism _that_ would have entailed.

* * *

_Wasted time  
__I cannot say that I was ready for this__  
But when worlds collide__  
And all that I have is all that I want  
The words seem to flow  
And the thoughts, they keep running  
And all that I have is yours  
And all that I am is yours_

– "The Sun and the Moon" – Mae


End file.
